


The Recording Option

by militaryhistory



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Also Werewolves, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hunting Giants, Magic and Science, Muggles aren't stupid, Muggles do it just as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22566796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/militaryhistory/pseuds/militaryhistory
Summary: Prime Ministers and security men are paranoid and clever folk--it's in their nature--and Obliviation can only do so much. AU. Note: I suspect that this fic's presentation of the war with Grindelwald will not be canon-compliant as regards the Fantastic Beasts movies.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

7 April, 1955

Anthony Eden leaned back in his chair. It had been a very long road to this point, with more than a few missteps and deals that he regretted making, and many sacrifices along the way. However, he was finally the Prime Minister of Great Britain, which made all of that worthwhile in his book.

Well, there was one niggling thing. He was, quite probably, going mad.

The reason he had come to this conclusion was quite simple. A portrait on the wall of this office had spoken to him in the first moment that he had been alone here, informing him that some fellow that he had never heard of who bore a title he had never heard of—"Minister of Magic," whatever that meant—was going to come see him tonight, and, as if to add to the insanity, was coming via the fireplace, of all things. This was, he was quite sure, a hallucination caused by nervous strain brought on by the election.

Nevertheless, he had to be certain, and so here he was in his office, staring at the fireplace, well after he should be home eating dinner. He had about come to the conclusion that he had simply been hallucinating when the fire turned green.

He rubbed his eyes for a second, certain that he was simply seeing things, but, when he had removed his hands from his eyes, the fire was still green. He then jumped in his chair as a man stepped out of the fire.

"Ah, the new Prime Minister, I presume. I'm Aberforth Ponsonby, Minister of Magic. What's your name?" he asked brightly, holding out his hand.

"Anthony Eden," Eden heard himself saying as he took this strange man's hand and shook it.

"Well, now that we've been introduced, let me tell you a few things. One, with any luck, you'll never see me again. I'll only see you again in order to introduce my replacement as Minister, or if some disaster occurs in the wizarding world that bleeds over into your world. Two, you are not going mad. Every Prime Minister of Britain since Robert Walpole, and almost every monarch of England since Ethelred the Unready, has known of us. Three, don't bother trying to contact me, or my successor. There's no way for you to do so."

He turned and stepped back towards the fire, and threw some kind of powder into it that turned it green again. "And fourth," he said, looking back over his shoulder at Eden, who stood looking very much like a fish out of water, "Don't bother telling anyone. After all," he smiled wickedly, "who'd believe you if you did?" And with that, he stepped into the fire and vanished, leaving Eden alone in the Prime Minister's office.

* * *

9 April, 1955

Dick White wondered why the new Prime Minister had requested to see him so soon as he sat outside his office. He had assumed that there would be a bit more of a settling in period before the new man requested information from the head of the Security Service.

However, such was not to be, and fortunately he had a copy of all the information he believed the Prime Minister would need to know in a single file folder that he kept in his desk, buried between a file concerning a certain Harold Wilson fellow and another file containing a full accounting of all agency petrol expenses.

When the men the Prime Minister had been meeting with left, he immediately asked White to come into the room. Before White could even attempt to pass the folder to him, the Prime Minister spoke.

"Yes, Mr. White, I am well aware that I will need to be informed about the state of Britain's internal security regarding the infiltration of spies, particularly from the Russians. However, that is not why I wanted to see you today."

White was somewhat bewildered at this statement, but was also curious about what the Prime Minister wanted to speak with him about, if not the security of Britain from spies.

"I want the Security Service," Eden continued, "to place cameras in this office. Not only that, I want them constantly going at all times—take whatever measures necessary to do so. I want you to make especially sure that you cover the chimney over there."

White blinked. Eden was usually a very sensible man—why did he want a camera covering the chimney?

"Also," Eden finished, "since you came all this way, hand me that file you've got there. I might as well know who I can trust the secrets of the Realm with and who I can't."

White relaxed slightly. At least the Prime Minister had some ability to keep it together. "Yes, Prime Minister," he said, and leaned forward to give him the file. "Please note that it is considered unadvisable to leave the building with this material. I would stay, but I'm in a bit of a rush. Please burn all of the materiel in there when you're done—it shouldn't be hard, it's carbon paper."

White paused for a minute, thinking rapidly. While he wasn't entirely sure if installing cameras in the Prime Minister's office fell strictly under protecting the Realm from subversion, it wasn't an outright violation of the Maxwell-Fyfe Directive, and it could be useful. "And I will get those cameras that you want into this office forthwith."

Eden sighed. "Thank you, Mr. White. You have no idea how much of a load that takes off my mind."

* * *

10 January, 1957

Jim Rope yawned. This was one of the most boring assignments he had ever received in his time on the Security Service. It wasn't like he'd been expecting something out of an Ian Fleming novel, but this was a little bit silly. He had spent the last six months staring at television screens showing the entirety of the Prime Minister's office, and while there had been some rather interesting occurrences, they mostly served to point out the stultifying boredom of the rest of the time. Maybe with a new Prime Minister things would be a tad bit more exciting—he hoped so, anyway.

However, this looked like yet another rather boring night, and Rope settled himself in for another uneventful four hours. He started, however, when he saw the new Prime Minister sit up in his chair, and, as his jaw dropped, realized that this was not a normal night in any shape, form or fashion when a man stepped out of the fireplace and extended his hand to shake the Prime Minister's.

He was in a state of shock—such a state of shock, in fact, that he missed the entire conversation the two men had, and almost didn't catch it when the man waved the Prime Minister a cheery goodbye, threw something into the fireplace, then stepped into it and vanished from sight.

He sat there, frozen, for a few minutes. Surely that couldn't have actually happened? Surely a man couldn't have just popped out of a chimney, talked to the Prime Minister, then popped right back into the chimney?

He shook himself, then immediately began to dial headquarters. The Director-General definitely would want to hear about this.

* * *

12 January, 1957

Part of Roger Hollis was still in a state of shock. Surely he and the Prime Minister were not about to discuss how to spy upon wizards who appeared to be running around Britain?

But they were, and while he had been somewhat skeptical of Rope's wild tale, he had been convinced after seeing the tape of what had happened in the Prime Minister's office two nights before.

The other part, however, was still the director of the Security Service, and he came to his feet as soon as the secretary told him he could go into the Prime Minister's office.

The Prime Minister looked somewhat harried, Hollis noted. There were several reasons for this that almost anyone could have guessed, the rift between Britain and the United States that had been occasioned by the Suez crisis being the main one. However, Hollis also knew that what he was about to discuss with the Prime Minister was also involved.

"Ah, Mr. Hollis," Macmillan said as he rose and extended his hand. "What is it that you wanted to discuss with me?"

"Well, Prime Minister," Hollis said slowly, "it has to do with the man who came to see you two nights ago."

Macmillan looked rather like a man might upon being told that his wife had found out that he had been found drunk in Soho the week before. "How did you find out about that?"

"Your predecessor, I presume after receiving a similar visit to yours, asked my predecessor to set up hidden cameras in this office. When I took over the Security Service, I continued the practice. This was one of the things I was going to mention to you during my initial briefing," Hollis replied levelly. "However, now that I know why Prime Minister Eden wanted the cameras set up in his office, I have one question for you. Do you want the Security Service to attempt to find these people?"

Macmillan did not answer for a few moments, and Hollis could see the wheels turning in his head. On the one hand, there was the fact that this Ponsonby fellow had told him not to attempt to contact them. On the other hand, there was the fact that these people represented a Possible Threat to the Security of the Realm.

MacMillan nodded to himself. "Mr. Hollis," he said quietly, "I want you to find these people, but understand that I do not want you to take any of your men off the job of finding Russians, is that clear?"

Hollis, feeling somewhat insulted that anyone would question his commitment to ferreting out Soviet spies, nodded. "Would you like to hear the rest of the briefing?"

"Yes, by all means."

* * *

19 December, 1959

Jim Rope groused to himself as he stood looking at a space in between a book shop and a record shop as the wind that was funnelled down Charing Cross Road bit at him. Did no one come out this way?

He had been assigned to Operation Merlin on the basis that, by virtue of being the man behind the cameras that night in the Prime Minister's office, he was the one who know the most about how these people operated. Rope had pointed out to the assignment officer that while this was technically true, it was a little bit like assigning a man from the Yorkshire Dales to be a guide to cities because he had been to Scarborough once. He had been rather frostily informed that "Seeing Scarborough once is better than not having seen a city at all" and had been assigned to the operation before he could make up another excuse.

As it turned out, he was the only person assigned to the operation, for two reasons. First, the Security Service had been ordered by the Prime Minister not to take men away from its other departments, and second, he had the suspicion that Hollis thought he could take care of himself due to his time with the Royal Marines in Korea.

As a result, he had spent the next year and a half trying to find these elusive wizards on his own. There had been many tantalizing leads—people who had total blanks in their memory regarding certain days, old murders that were utterly inexplicable, and, at one point, he had received notice from an old friend on the Bristol police force of a tea set that moved about on its own. By the time he got there, however, the tea set was gone, his old friend the constable couldn't remember having placed the phone call, and while the old woman who'd called the constable remembered calling him, she was sure that she had called him due to some boys throwing a rock through her window, and couldn't remember anything peculiar about the tea set she had just sold.

This had not deterred him, but had only redoubled his resolve to find these people. Who knew what things these wizards had done to people who now couldn't remember a thing? It wasn't the sort of thing that was supposed to happen in Britain.

It had been pure luck that he'd been walking down this road three months ago when he saw someone walk into the apparently nonexistent space between the book shop and record shop that he was now gazing at so intently. Being a careful man, he had not only written down the location he was going to watch, but why he was going to watch it. He had also elected to not simply stand outside—after all, if they'd escaped detection for this long, they were bound to notice a man staring at the wall between two shops. Therefore, he simply walked by here every few hours, first in one direction, then in another.

This was the hundredth time—he'd counted—that he'd come by here, and there were times when he wondered if he hadn't been seeing things that day. However, he had seen people going into the nonexistent space between the shops, so at least he knew he wasn't barking up the wrong tree. There was the possibility that he was barking mad, but after that film, he wasn't sure what the line was between madness and sanity.

That still left him outside in London in the week before Christmas with the wind going through him like he wasn't there.

When a man did step out of the nonexistent space, Rope almost missed him. He saw the man turn his head, this way and that, and then turn to walk off down the street. Rope quickly followed the man's thatch of red hair down the street, trying to act as much like he wasn't following the man as possible while keeping him in sight at all times.

Rope got lucky. He caught up with his quarry just as he turned into an alleyway, at which point he pulled out the cosh that he kept on his person at all times these days and applied it as lightly as possible to the man's head. He fell like a stone.

At this point, Rope remembered that he had no arrest authority whatsoever and briefly cursed his forgetfulness. He took a brief moment to call down a curse or two on David Maxwell-Fyfe, popped his head out of the alley, and Lady Luck, as if to apologize for what she'd been doing to him these long months, smiled on him again.

"Robert Graves, where've you been?"

"Jim! I never expected to find you in an alley on Charing Cross Road. What brings you here?"

"Business, Robert. Like what we did back in Korea. Can't say anything more."

"You wouldn't be telling me that unless you needed me. You always were closed-mouthed. What d'you need?"

"I need you to arrest someone."

"Arrest someone?"

"This fellow behind me."

Graves looked around Rope, then looked back at him. "Did you hit him with Old Reliable?"

Rope nodded. Graves sighed. "I really hope you got the right man, Jim."

He walked over to the man, knelt, handcuffed him and pulled him to his feet, speaking to him as he did so. "Sir, you are under arrest for…for…" He glared at Rope, who quickly said, "suspicion of being a spy for a foreign power."

"Yes. That," Graves finished. He looked over at Rope. "Where do you want me to take him?"

"Nowhere yet," Rope replied as he walked over to them. "Not until I check him for something."

The man was dazed enough that he made no protest as Rope frisked him, but he had recovered enough that Rope felt him tense as he put his hand on what felt like a wooden stick on the inside of his coat.

"And what might this be, sir?" Rope asked quietly as he pulled the stick out from his coat and noted its symmetry and polished appearance. He saw the man's eyes widen, and Rope decided to hazard a guess. "A wand, perhaps?"

The man immediately tried to jump at him, but Graves held him back. Rope did not smile as he inserted the wand into his own coat. "Sir, I do not want to harm you, and I do not intend to. I simply want to ask you a few questions, and then let you be about…whatever business you were attending to."

The man glared at him, then nodded slowly.

Rope nodded to Graves, who nudged their prisoner into moving along, and they began to walk out of the alleyway. Just before they reached the exit, Rope turned to look back at the red-haired man.

"What is your name, sir?"

The man glared at him briefly, then shrugged. "There's no harm in telling you, I suppose. My name is Septimus. Septimus Weasley."


	2. Chapter 2

19 January, 1957

Rope sat at a table in the flat he had rented for this purpose with a recording device, a microphone, Septimus Weasley's wand, and Septimus Weasley, who looked very frustrated at the fact that his hands were not only cuffed to each other, but also to the back of the frame chair he were sitting in, in front of him. Graves, in the meantime, looked distinctly uncomfortable as he leaned against one of the rather dirty walls, which, like the others, had two or three obviously placed bugs on it. Rope really hadn't wanted to bring him in on this, but he needed another person to help him, Graves had been almost at the end of his patrol, and he trusted him with his life.

He turned on the recording device. "Please state your name for the record," he said in the most formal manner he could manage.

"Septimus Weasley," Weasley replied.

"What is your occupation?"

Weasley glared at him, then shrugged. "The statute has been breached already, and given that you've got recording devices all through here, I don't think that we can Obliviate our way out of this one." He sighed heavily. "I've tried to tell the Ministry that we couldn't keep the statute forever. You Muggles have been advancing your technology so fast that it's hard to keep up, unlike us."

"What statute are you talking about, Mr Weasley?" Rope asked.

Weasley sputtered. "What—you mean you don't—no, of course you don't know what the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy is, you're not one of us." He sighed. "After your Glorious Revolution, we sought protection from William and Mary, knowing that if we could not get protection in England, we could get it nowhere. They declined because of fear of severe political consequences, particularly from the religious authorities."

"Religious—oh," Rope stopped before he said something stupid.

Weasley nodded. "Exactly. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. As a result of this, a group of wizards came together and drew up the Statute in order to protect themselves by concealing themselves, and we have done so ever since. Unfortunately, there have been those of us who have broken this statute, either accidentally or purposefully, and we have a devil of a time dealing with that. Why, I remember this tea set in Bristol half a year back…"

"I remember that!" Rope exclaimed. "It was one of the reasons why I kept hunting for your kind."

"I knew I'd forgotten to ask that constable something," Weasley growled. "Can't believe I forgot to ask if he'd called anyone."

"What would you have done if he had?"

"I would have come to London and Obliviated you," Weasley replied matter-of-factly.

Rope shook his head. "I was recording my conversation with the constable. It wouldn't have worked."

Weasley smiled. "You'd be surprised, Mr—er…"

"The name is Rope, Mr Weasley. Jim Rope."

Graves, still leaning against the wall, snickered. Rope glared at him. Weasley, not noticing the byplay, continued. "We have our methods for dealing with electronic devices, mostly involving just throwing any particular bit of magic at them. But I digress. Only fifty years ago, most of you Muggles didn't have those telephone things. You either used a telegraph or mailed a letter, while we used the Floo Network and messenger owls."

"Excuse me," Rope interrupted, "but what is the Floo Network?"

Weasley gave Rope a very annoyed look, then explained. "It's a transportation network that uses fireplaces to get from one area to another, or can be used to talk to someone. The fireplace in your Prime Minister's office is connected to it, and before you get any ideas," Weasley said as Rope felt his face light up, "it takes magic to get through."

Having said this, Weasley grinned and said, "But again, I digress. Now almost all of you Muggles have telephones in your houses, and many of your government operatives have mobile communication devices, while we are still using fireplaces and birds."

Rope was getting the distinct feeling that this man as holding an ace or two that he wasn't showing, but decided to let it pass. He decided to try and steer this conversation back to its beginning.

"That is quite fascinating, Mr Weasley, but what does that have to do with the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?"

Weasley sighed. "What I'm getting at here is that, back in the early days of the Statute, if one of us were caught doing some sort of magic, it was a simple matter for the Ministry to Obliviate the memory of that particular event and all related matters from the minds of the people who witnessed the event, and generally we didn't have to go any further than that. Nowadays we have to find everyone they might have called to tell about this strange thing they saw and Obliviate their memory of being told as well. It's frustrating and worrisome."

"I can imagine that having no memory of an entire day might be somewhat disconcerting," Rope said dryly.

Weasley paused for a minute, then, very slowly, said, "I hadn't thought of that."

"I'll wager you didn't," Graves muttered, "going 'round and wiping folks' memories clean. It's a disgrace, is what it is."

"What would you have us do then, eh?" Weasley said as he glared at Graves. "Reveal ourselves to the world? We tried that already, thank you, and while we didn't lose a lot of people, it sure wasn't for you Muggles' lack of trying."

Rope held up his hands. "Easy, easy, you two," he said in as calm a voice as he could muster, although he shared Graves' displeasure at Weasley's attitude towards removing people's memories. That he wasn't reacting the way Graves had was, he thought, one of the consequences of having been in the Security Service. That, and Graves' temper had not been easy to restrain at the best of times back in Korea, and the period after one had had his view of the world dramatically expanded was probably not the best of times.

"Mr Weasley," Rope said in an effort to get things back on track, "What is your occupation, exactly?"

"I work for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, Mr. Rope, where I mostly deal with the aftermath of incidents like that tea set and wizards deciding that it's a jolly good bit of fun to play magical pranks on you people. It's rather distressing what some of our folk think is funny, it is."

"Mr Weasley," Graves said from over against the wall, "How many of our people have been killed by your kind in the past year?"

"The truth, Mr Graves, is that I don't know. I wouldn't estimate more than three, but the fact is that there are so many ways to kill using magic that don't involve directly putting a curse on the target that I couldn't list them all—oh."

"Do you understand why we're somewhat concerned, Mr Weasley?" Rope asked quietly.

"Yes," Weasley said slowly, "Yes, I do."

"Good," Rope said. "Now, I have another question. Are you people only in Britain, or are you in more places?"

"Oh, we're all over the world, although our largest concentrations are in Western and Central Europe."

"Any Russian wizards?" Rope asked, hoping that Weasley would say that they would be willing to engage in subsersive activities against the Kremlin-or, failing that, would remain neutral. He did not want to deal with Russian spies who erase all memory of having been in a particular place at a particular time.

"I have some awareness of why you're asking that, so let me simply say that, with the exception of a man named Gellert Grindelwald, we do not interfere with Muggle politics. And we dealt with him."

"How reassuring," Graves muttered.

Ignoring Graves, Rope continued. "How many wizards are there in the Britain?"

"Around several thousand, I believe. It's one of the largest wizarding communities in the world."

"Wait, wait, wait," Graves said. "You mean to tell me that there are thousands and thousands of people who can do things like erase memories and kill people without leaving a trace of it running about?"

"Ah, no, Mr—"

"Graves."

"Well, Mr Graves, not many wizards are any good at Obliviation, and, in the case of using non-lethal spells on devices to make them deadly, very few would think to do that. Almost none of us really take much interest in Muggle technology, which is one reason why no one in the Ministry's paid any attention to my warnings."

"I see," Rope replied. Maybe there was an angle there. "Would you like to be listened to?"

Weasley sat up and glared at Rope. "I may think that the Ministry is hidebound and foolish, but I will not betray them."

"Easy, easy, Mr Weasley," Rope said quickly, "I would not ask you to betray your people. It is simply that His Majesty's Government does not appreciate being left almost completely in the dark regarding matters that could potentially harm the Realm."

Weasley thought on this a minute. "What are you proposing?"

Rope did not sigh in relief, but it was a near-run thing. "Perhaps we could have lunch, say, once a month and discuss various matters."

"You know," Weasley said, "I'm not entirely sure why I should agree to this in good faith, seeing as our introduction was you hitting me with a blackjack, carting me here, handcuffing me to this chair, and then interrogating me."

"Mr Weasley," Rope replied, "Please consider the previous conversation we have had. Do you not think that I acted prudently? I am on an assignment from my government, sir. This is not a private matter."

Weasley subsided at this and returned to the previous topic of discussion. "What would we discuss during these meetings?" he asked suspiciously.

"Trends in the Wizarding world, and my world, especially those that could cause friction between us or expose you, that sort of thing."

Weasley leaned back and rubbed his chin as he went through what Rope had said. "Yes…that is a thought. In fact," he said, "I like it. But," he continued as he leaned forward, "There are a few conditions, or the deal's off."

"Let's hear them."

"First, you will never ask me for particular locations. Our security depends upon secrecy, Mr Rope."

"Agreed," Rope replied, although he was already trying to think of ways to deal with this problem.

"Second, I make the contact, not you."

"Agreed," Rope replied again, although this was an easy concession to make—he was not going to go patrolling down Charing Cross Road for three months again, and he had no idea how to find this man otherwise.

"Third, this never goes past the absolute minimum number of people in your organization that need to know about it and Mr Graves here."

Rope thought about this for a moment. This seemed like a ploy to ensure that Obliviating would take much less effort than otherwise, but it was probably in the best interests of the Realm. The hysteria that would result from letting this be made public would be horrific—it would be far worse than when the news about Maclean and Burgess got out.

"Agreed," he said, finally.

"Thank you," Weasley replied. "Now could you let me out of these handcuffs and give me my wand back?"

Rope shook his head. "Not until you are well away from here, Mr Weasley."

Weasley shrugged. "Have it your way, then."

Rope got up, walked over to Graves, and whispered, "Get him to Hyde Park, give him his wand back, and let him go."

"Right. And where will you be?" Graves whispered back.

"Getting this to the Security Service. I don't want to lose this information."

Graves nodded, and they both walked over to the table, where he began the tedious business of un-cuffing and re-cuffing Weasley, while Rope slipped the tape recorder into his coat's inside pocket and held Weasley's wand. Once he had been removed from the chair, Rope gave the wand to Graves, who placed it inside his coat, and they all headed to the door. Once they had left the building, Rope looked at Graves as he turned to go down to Hyde Park. "Write everything that's happened today down, Rob."

Graves nodded. "I will, and make sure you've got several copies of that recording."

"Believe you me," Rope said as they parted, "I will make sure we don't lose this information."

* * *

20 January, 1957

"What did you think you were doing, Rope?" Hollis yelled. "You get your first lead in months, and what do you do? You throw him back after barely an hour! Where's the sense in that, man?"

Rope did not answer. He had anticipated that Hollis would call him into his office and give him a thorough tongue-lashing for letting Weasley go, which was why he had crafting his response since he woke up this morning.

"Well, aren't you going to answer?"

"Sir, did you listen to the recording of the interrogation?"

"Yes, I did."

"Do you recall the part where he very casually mentioned that there was a large group of wizards whose job it was to erase the memories of regular people who find out about magic?"

"Yes. And?"

"If we had kept him, it is very likely that he would have been missed, and that they would have sent people after him, it is very possible that they would have been able to find us instantly, and then there would have been almost no chance of us being able to use this information. As it is, I was able to get several copies of the transcript made and sent off to every station in Britain we have."

Hollis leaned back in his chair. "Hmmmm…yes, I suppose so. Can you trust him to keep his word?"

"I think so, sir."

"That's not precisely what I wanted to hear, Mr Rope, but given the circumstances, well done."

"Thank you sir."

"By the way, when are you supposed to meet this Weasley fellow?"

"I'm not sure, sir—however, I know he doesn't want this information getting out, so I imagine he'll contact me quite soon."

"Do you think he'll tell anyone?"

"Possibly. I can't see him being very enthusiastic about telling his superiors, though. Probably just his wife, if he's got one."

* * *

19 January, 1957

"Albus, we have a problem," Septimus Weasley said as he came into Albus Dumbledore's office.

"What sort of problem might that be, and would you like a lemon drop?" Dumbledore asked as he ate one of the candies.

"They know, Albus!"

"Who knows what, Septimus? Does Barty Crouch know about Mundungus Fletcher's affinity for illegal flying carpets?"

"I'm being serious, man. It's the Muggles! They know we exist."

"Come, come, come," Dumbledore replied, "There have been many Muggles who have discovered our existence—as I recall, your work is dealing with Muggles who discover our existence. Why are you all in a lather?"

"Because it's not just some random bathers who happened to see a dragon or some old lady with a tea set, it's MI5!"

That changed matters. "How did they find out?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

"I know they caught me when I came out of the Leaky Cauldron—I don't know how they knew to look there, though."

"Yes—this is bad, Septimus, very bad indeed. There is hope, though—does the man who captured you intend to keep it secret?"

"Yes, he does, or so he told me."

"I imagined he might. I had some dealings with some of their Security men while I was hunting Grindelwald—all concealed of course—and they were near to hysterics based only on what I told them, which was that he was a member of the Black Sun organization."

"What is the Black Sun organization?"

"What was it, say rather. A group of Nazis who had various interests in magic—they went about it all the wrong way of course. But anyway, there would likely be severe consequences if the British government were to reveal our existence to the world. They will likely keep it under lock and key. What did they want from you, anyway?"

"I think they want to find about things before they start falling apart, instead of when they do. They wanted me to act as another source besides the Minister," Weasley replied.

"Yes, that is understandable. I do want to know, Septimus, why you have come to me with this information. I am not, after all, in the Ministry."

"I was worried, Albus."

"About what?"

"You know what the Ministry's favoured method is! Obliviate them all and maybe perform some memory modifications."

"It appears to have worked thus far," Dumbledore pointed out gently

"The problem is," Weasley retorted, "I'm willing to bet that now that MI5 have got on it, they've performed several precautionary measures to avoid us simply memory modifying them and making them think it was all a hoax. I thought you might have a better idea of what to do."

Dumbledore pondered this question for a moment, then recalled what he'd seen of the British secret services. Very serious and dedicated men, they'd been, not ones to discount anything that might be a threat to the Realm, and ones who would likely deal with opponents with unknown but terrifying capabilities with extreme caution. Yes, Septimus had the right of it. And this could be useful.

"I believe you did well, Septimus," he said at last, "And I believe you were right not to go to the Ministry. Doubtless it would have resulted in a drastic overreaction that might have ended up resulting in the very thing we want to avoid." He thought for a moment. "How did they want to get in touch with you?"

"Their man asked me to contact him once a month to arrange lunch."

"Do so soon, if you would, Septimus. I am very interested to find out what these gentlemen want."


	3. Chapter 3

August 24, 1958

Jim Rope leaned back in his chair as Septimus Weasley gave him an exasperated look. "How many times," the wizard asked him, "are you going to ask me the same question differently? We do not have much contact with wizards in other lands."

"But surely there must be some sort of regular contact between your government here and the wizarding governments in other countries?" Rope was extremely frustrated. Weasley had freely admitted that there were wizards in other countries, but refused to admit of much contact beyond occasional matters that concerned all of wizardkind. It was most annoying.

Weasley sighed. "Very little. We tend to keep to ourselves. I think that stems from our attitude towards you people."

Rope relaxed his face, but snarled inwardly. It made no sense for wizards in different countries to not have frequent contact with each other. Also, Weasley had said some things that implied as such. Getting details, however, had been impossible.

It was time to consider a different approach. One that did not involve talking to someone who had every incentive to lie to him.

* * *

October 14, 1958

Rope tapped the file in front of him nervously. It had taken quite a bit of convincing to get the head of MI5 to allow him to share this information with the other domestic intelligence agencies of allies where they knew there was a wizarding presence. If this went badly, he was going to be in extremely bad odor with his superiors. He did rather wish that he'd been able to be more specific in the letter he'd sent, though.

He looked up when the door opened and the representatives from the various agencies came in, each bearing a briefcase. He rose to greet them as they spread out around the circular table.

"Gentlemen," he said, "welcome. James Rope, MI5."

"Daniel Haggerty, FBI," the man directly to his right declared.

"Anders Torvaldson, PST."

"Jacques Kellermann, DCRG."

"Otto Wilders, BfV."

"Why did you call us here, Mr. Rope?" Haggerty asked querously. "I was working on nailing a kidnapper when I was informed that I had to come here."

"Indeed," Kellermann added as he leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. "I desire to know why we have been called here as well."

Torvaldson and Wilders simply nodded.

"Very well, gentlemen," Rope replied. "There is a group of people in our countries who have power that we do not understand. They can go wherever they like, and do so instantly in certain cases. They can read minds, transform themselves into animals, and can kill people without leaving a mark on them. They are also well-nigh undetectable and untouchable by our methods. These people are called wizards, and they have the potential to be the greatest threat any of us have yet faced."

Much to his surprise, not one of the men in front of him showed even the slightest sign of disbelief. Not a one asked if this was some kind of joke the Service was playing. All of them stayed in their seats and appeared to be paying attention.

Rope continued on from there, going over all that the British knew of the wizards, their activities, their strengths, and their weaknesses.

"Are there any questions?" he asked when he had finished.

"Yeah," Haggerty replied. "Why haven't you told us about this before now?"

"Because it took me this long to convince the head of the Service to share this information with all of you."

"Right. If you will excuse me, I need to consult with my superiors," Haggerty said as he stood up

"As do I," Kellermann said as he followed.

Torvaldson and Wilders simply nodded as they rose.

"Yes, yes, of course," Rope replied, inwardly wondering if anything good would come of this, or whether he would simply be sacked when the heads of the other domestic intelligence agencies called the Head to ask why the time of some of their best men had been wasted.

He waited there for a quarter of an hour that seemed like a quarter of a lifetime before the others came back into the room and sat down. Haggerty looked subdued, as did Kellermann, while Torvaldson and Wilders looked quite pleased.

Wilders spoke first. "Herr Rope, we have each spoken to our respective governments, and have agreed that information sharing regarding these wizards would be useful. By happy coincidence, Herr Torvaldson and I happen to be the men who have oversight over them for our respective countries."

Haggerty spoke then, "Yes, well. Neither Mr. Kellermann nor I are in charge of these matters. The only reason we're here is due to the fact that we weren't informed of the full purpose of this meeting. Our replacements are being called as we speak, and mine should be here by tomorrow."

"Mine," Kellermann said before Haggerty could continue, "should be here in six hours."

"If you'll excuse us, then," Haggerty cut in, "we're leaving now."

And so they did.

When the door shut behind the two men, Torvaldson and Wilders looked at Rope, then looked at each other, then nodded.

"Idiots. Both of them. And so are you," Torvaldson said flatly.

Rope blinked. "Excuse me?"

"How long have you been dealing with this?"

"Nearly seven years, but I don't see how—"

"My country has known about these wizards since the war. The Germans," he nodded to Wilders, who remained silent, "have known since the 1930s. You should have known about them as well."

"Excuse me?"

"One of your wizards worked with SOE during the war. I was in the resistance at the time. He helped us sabotage Grindelwald's Thule project." Torvaldson paused for a moment. "You do know who Grindelwald is and what the Thule project was?"

"All I know from my informant is that Grindelwald was a dark wizard who allied with Hitler. I hadn't heard of this Thule project until you mentioned it."

Torvaldson shook his head. "Idiots, I said."

Rope felt a protest begin to form in his chest as Torvaldson shook his head. "I remember that you're in communication with a wizard. I also know that you haven't asked the right questions. Or he isn't as important as you think."

"I don't think he's very important. But he does have access to important people, and handles matters between them and us."

Torvaldson nodded. "Good. However, we have slightly closer ties, due to the Thule incident and certain other occurrences. Your information is…incomplete."

"What do you mean?" Rope asked, wondering what new surprise was coming.

"I presume that he has mentioned that there are wizards in other countries?"

Rope nodded. "That's how we knew to contact those invited to the meeting—that, and certain records that seemed to not exist—several of which involved SOE operations in Norway against the Germans."

Torvaldson smiled. "Good. There is hope yet."

Just as Rope fully grasped just how backhanded a compliment that was, Torvaldson continued. "There are, to my knowledge, wizarding governments-within-governments in every independent country, and likely some in the African and Asian colonies. However, the wizards go to various schools in order to learn how to use their magic properly, and seem to take allegiance to their schools more seriously than allegiance to their governments."

Rope grimaced. Wonderful. As if he didn't have enough trouble dealing with networks based on old school ties already.

Torvaldson continued. "There are five schools in Europe and North America, although there could be more. They all tend to keep to themselves, although some do so more than others—the Americans and the Durmstrangers especially. Your British and the French usually have more contact with each other and other outsiders, while the Russians tend to cast wary eyes in all directions, though they maintain ties to Durmstrang.

"There are also more than a few outside of those areas. Egypt, China, and India are…extremely powerful. They also largely keep to themselves, even more than the Americans do.

"The rest of the world—Brazil, Japan, and the rest—tend to favor the American approach when at all possible, at least within their regions. There are few countries with sufficient magic to maintain schools of their own. Magic was a late transplant to the Americas, and little made it south of the Sahara, or so our sources tell us. They may be lying to us about all this. I would not be surprised if they were."

Rope blinked, but rallied. "So, what else do you know?"

Wilders leaned forward. "We have certain files on their capabilities. Grindelwald worked very closely with the Black Sun, and they developed numerous tactics to coordinate magic and technology. They kept detailed files in Wewelsberg castle that were evacuated when the Americans approached and moved to Kiel, where Admiral Doenitz arranged for the SS men in charge of them to end up in the canal. He then hid them in a destroyed U-boat pen for safekeeping." He looked levelly at Rope. "I was the man the Admiral assigned to both tasks. When Bonn established the BfV in 1950, they recruited me because of that."

"Did you bring the files with you?"

"I did not. Not then. I did not trust Otto John, and rightfully so."

Rope nodded. The first head of West Germany's domestic intelligence service had gone over to the East Germans a few years before, which had been very embarrassing for everyone.

"I did turn them over when Schrubbers took over, and he put me in charge of them, and all matters related to magic. That was when I met Torvaldson."

Torvaldson nodded.

"The Americans and French do actually have magic specialists themselves. They just didn't send them. I'm not sure what they have. But we will help you. This…is necessary."

Rope smiled. Things were finally going according to plan.

* * *

November 23, 1959

"This is a dangerous game you're playing, Albus," Minerva McGonagall almost hissed. "And you, Septimus," she said as she whirled upon the unfortunate fellow. "How could ye let a Muggle get his claws into you, then not do something about it?"

Septimus glared at her. "It's not like it used to be. We can't keep playing by the old rules anymore. We're going to have to change some things."

McGonagall opened her mouth to deliver a sharp retort, but Dumbledore cut her off. "Septimus is right, Minerva. Based on what he's told me, the Muggles have developed technology that has the possibility of someday eclipsing our magic. Technology that we will be unable to use."

She nodded unwillingly. They'd learned that electricity and magic did not mix. "Do you really think that…"

Weasley nodded. "I regularly deal with Muggles. The last war, and this 'space race' that's going on is pushing them forward faster than we've ever seen. And this man, Rope…" he shuddered. "He's a sharp one. I told you about how he got me, and made sure I couldn't keep him from remembering."

"What should we do, then?"

Dumbledore looked over at Septimus. "Your son, Arthur. He has a great interest in Muggle artifacts, yes?"

Septimus nodded. "Yes. I've actually been wondering whether or not to encourage or discourage him, after what's happened to me."

"Encourage him. Perhaps he will be able to find a way for us to be able to use some of this technology ourselves, or at least find a way to counteract it."

"Can we afford to wait that long, Albus? Arthur hasn't even gone to Hogwarts yet."

"Your father's a Muggle, Minerva. How long do you think it will be before devices like the ones Septimus has been discussing will be readily available to the general public or portable?"

"Decades," McGonagall replied.

"Precisely. We can afford to take the long view. And, if we cooperate with these Muggles, we might be able to work with them. And you both know why we might want to."

* * *

February 29, 1968

Jim Rope smiled as he lifted a pint of bitters to his lips—no martinis for him, thank you—and quaffed deeply. It was his unofficial retirement party—the official one would be in about a week—but it was the one he really cared about. He'd been sequestered from the rest of MI5 for over a decade, and the men in this room were, despite largely being from different countries, his closest friends.

Which wasn't good spycraft, but he wasn't sure if he was really a spy.

Torvaldson had retired years ago, and had been replaced by Otto Haakonson, who was cheerfully talking with the Frenchman, Reynard Vaux. Wilders was still the West German liaison, and he was happily talking with William Hanrahan, who was the American go-between for the "No-Madges," as they were called over there, and their wizards, a difficult task given their determined isolationism.

And there was the sixth man, his successor. Roger Dalton had not been pleased when he discovered that his new assignment was to the "Hidden Communities Section."

Once he understood how crucial the work was, though, he'd come around, although it would be interesting to see how well he'd absorbed what Rope had taught him.

He sighed. The governments of the West really needed to get more organized in how they dealt with these wizards. Based on some hints Weasley had inadvertently dropped, someone was exploiting and whipping up anti-Muggle sentiment among Britain's wizards to gather himself a little following. Also, more "Muggle-borns," as the British magic-users referred to those born to parents without magic, were appearing than ever beforee little le these days than before, while some of the old families seemed to be dying out—which seemed to be how things were outside of the wizarding world as well—and that was inflaming tensions as well.

It wasn't all bad, though—Septimus had a son, Arthur, who he'd introduced Rope to a few years ago, and who he, in turn, had introduced to Dalton. The lines of communication needed to be kept open.

He rather hoped that Dalton would keep him informed.

* * *

June 16, 1970

Roger Dalton looked around at what had been a pleasant country house and sighed. It was fairly obvious what had happened, if you knew where to look. The Ministry's cleanup teams were a little _too_ thorough, and tended to default to one or two potential explanations.

"So what actually happened?" he asked quietly.

Septimus Weasley shrugged bitterly. "We're not sure. We think it was these so-called 'Death Eaters,' whoever they are. Bring back the old ways and traditions, and all that." He spat to the side. "Old ways and traditions that were never as rigid as they try to claim. Not a wizarding family in all of Britain without a Muggle somewhere in the family tree. No such thing as a pureblood wizard."

Dalton nodded. "We've got those too. Nasty bits of work, they are. But they don't have magic."

"No, they don't," Weasley agreed. "And I'm afraid this sort of thing is going to only happen more and more."

"I would think the Ministry would want to stop this from happening."

"Some do. Others don't really care. And a few…well, the Death Eaters have sympathizers in the Ministry. I imagine you know the kind. 'Oh, they're a bit violent, but they've got the right idea.' A lot of the suspects are from old families, which makes it worse. Quite a hue and cry, if some of them got brought in for questioning."

Dalton grimaced. "Old Boy" networks had always been a problem for the agency. In a society as isolated and hidebound as the wizards seemed to be, he could only imagine that it was worse.

"Is there anything we can do about this?" he asked quietly.

"No," Septimus said flatly. "In order to have a chance of success, you would need to be waiting for them. That's how your predecessor found me," he added ruefully. "And these attacks seem to be random, so we have no way of knowing when and where they'll strike."

Dalton was rather disappointed at that, but said nothing more.

For one thing, it was fairly obvious to him that the wizard wasn't telling him everything.

* * *

June 17, 1970

"I lied to him, Albus. And, more importantly, I don't think he quite believed me."

"That _is_ a problem. But we both know why we can't let the Muggles into this."

Septimus grimaced, and Dumbledore understood why. He couldn't think of anything that would be more likely to cause more wizards to shift towards the Death Eater position.

Memories ran long, and any attack on wizardkind by Muggles—even in self-defense—would be seen as a return to the bad old days. That might change if things got bad enough, but he wasn't counting on that.

"He's growing impatient. That was the fourth attack in the past month. And they're only getting bolder."

Dumbledore tapped his chin. Septimus had a point. And there were some of Voldemort's allies that no wizard would really care about if a Muggle brought them down.

"Giants."

"Pardon?"

"Voldemort seems to have enlisted giants." He sighed. "I don't think even those with Death Eater sympathies will be upset if the Muggles should slay them, and some of the people on our side of things might see it as a point in their favor." He paused. "You know how hard it is to kill a giant, Septimus. Do you think the Muggles can do it?"

"Didn't you fight alongside them during the War?"

"I worked with them, briefly, but that was twenty-five years ago. I would assume that things might have changed."

"I've seen Muggle soldiers in training. Even an experienced Auror might find fighting them a chancy business."

"Truly?"

"You know how spells are. It's a rare one that won't just stop at whatever it hits first. Their 'bullets,'" Septimus made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, a gesture Dumbledore knew he must have picked up from either Rope or Dalton, since he'd never seen a wizard using it, "sometimes do that, but they'll sometimes go through solid oak doors and into whatever was behind them."

"Really?"

"Yes. You should come along sometime when I go. It's truly fascinating. I've seen trees cut down by their guns."


	4. Chapter 4

October 10, 1970

Dalton shivered and wondered how the SAS men around him could endure the weather so stoically. For all that it was summer, the Yorkshire Dales were still cold and wet, and the only reason he was here was because he was the man who had the most experience dealing with these matters.

Getting the government to agree to lend him an SAS team had not been as difficult as he'd feared. For one thing, the attacks had been occurring more and more frequently, and it was obvious to everyone that something strange was going on. For another, the Prime Minister was still somewhat disconcerted by what had happened on his first day in office, and, Dalton suspected, was willing to try something that could prove that technology could beat magic.

The hard part had been tracking down the giants Weasley had told him about. If you didn't know about magic, it was easy to write off their footprints as natural depressions, and the sight of them as a trick of the light.

He'd had to let the SAS team go through nearly all of his files to get them to start actually _seeing_ what was going on in front of them. Once they had, however, they'd taken to it quite well, and one thing they'd noticed was that the various groups of giants tended to return to the same places after their raids, and by the same routes.

Once they realized that, the soldiers had decided to ambush one particularly vicious group of four that had been going after farms in this area. It had taken some time to position properly—they'd had to infiltrate the area, not an easy feat with multiple heavy weapons, and then set up ambush positions—but they were here now, waiting for their prey to arrive, as they had for the past two days.

Then he heard one of the soldiers say over their radio, "They're 'ere," and his feelings of misery vanished as he crawled forward to his position next to where the team leader, Major Andrew Frobisher, had placed himself.

The officer was already looking through his binoculars at the approaching creatures when Dalton arrived at his position. "Ugly things," he commented. "You weren't joking."

The agent nodded. According to Weasley, giants were notorious for being inbred, stupid, belligerent, and very difficult to kill—apparently spells just bounced off of them.

Hopefully, the same wouldn't be true of their bullets.

The giants kept walking, heedless and careless of any danger, laughing and waving around the various trophies they'd acquired, usually body parts.

Dalton heard Frobisher say "Now."

The SAS team had twelve men in it. For this mission, they'd kept the snipers in their usual role, but everyone else was crewing either a Vickers or a Browning.

The snipers fired first, and he heard the whipcrack of their rounds and Frobisher's hiss as the officer gauged the effect with his binoculars.

"What happened?"

"Both rounds hit the lead giant in the head, but there wasn't any penetration."

At that point, the two Vickers machine guns opened up. While they did only use .303 rounds, Frobisher had wanted to see if they would work, especially with repeated hits in a small area.

The lead giant staggered as the first rounds hit it in the torso, and while at first it seemed like there was no effect Dalton heard it roar in pain after two or three seconds, then heard Frobisher say, "Good."

He wasn't sure why, but then he saw the monster crumple to the ground, after about fifteen seconds of sustained fire.

Then the men on the Brownings opened fire, and Dalton saw the results almost immediately. The .50 rounds' penetration capability apparently applied to giant hide as well as it did to anything else, and the other three giants fell in the next ten seconds.

Only one, the last, had realized anything more than the direction the bullets were coming from, and he'd only made it three steps before he went down.

Dalton smiled. _At least those of us without magic can do something to protect ourselves and aid our allies._

* * *

October 11, 1970

Septimus Weasley, still shaken by what he'd seen, wrapped his hands around the tea Dumbledore offered him as he told him, McGonagall, and Shacklebolt about what he'd seen the day before.

"It was utterly terrifying," he said quietly. "I'd seen what the Muggle weapons could do in training, but I'd never really seen them used against living targets."

Dumbledore nodded, and Septimus remembered that while the older wizard hadn't seen much of what Muggle weapons could do during WWII, he had seen a little of it.

"They tore the giants _apart,_ " he said, voice shaking slightly. "The first machine guns they tried—"

"Machine guns?" McGonagall asked.

"Fast-firing guns that shoot as long as someone holds the trigger down and someone makes sure it gets ammunition," Weasley explained. "Usually they fire 100-200 bullets before they stop firing—something about barrels overheating or something."

"Devilish devices," the Scotswoman muttered, and Septimus nodded.

"The first ones they tried just put a lot of holes in one of the giants. They killed it, but it took them a little time. The second ones—the sound of them was just heavy, and I think they fire slower than the first ones do, but the damage they did was a lot worse."

"What do you mean, Septimus?" Shacklebolt asked.

"What I mean is that a couple of those rounds took a giant's arm off," Septimus said flatly, and the other three all looked at each other in astonishment.

"Did you just say," Dumbledore spoke carefully, "that Muggle bullets caused a giant to lose an arm?"

"Yes, and to have exit wounds the size of a dinner plate in his back."

"Albus," McGonagall said quietly, "this is dangerous news. Could these Muggles use such weapons on us?"

Weasley shook his head. "Not nearly as easily as with the giants. Those machineguns are heavy and hard to carry, and giants are big, slow, stupid targets. The four of us could have defeated the whole Muggle group easily."

"Do you think we should do this again, Septimus?"

"As long as we don't receive word of some great hue and cry about Muggles killing magical creatures…"

Everyone in the room snorted with laughter at that, including him.

"…then I think we should. That way we can concentrate on the Death Eaters."

"A sound suggestion. But try to keep them on this for as long as possible, Septimus. I would rather these Muggles not spend a long time with little to do."

He didn't like the idea of deliberately letting the giants ravage the English countryside, but he knew Dumbledore was right. They _could not_ afford to have a wizard die by Muggle hands.

* * *

December 15, 1971

Dalton looked out at the field in front of him with a mixture of satisfaction and anger.

The satisfaction was because Frobisher and his men had, once again, wiped out a raiding party of giants, and he suspected there were few left in the United Kingdom, as there were a lot fewer disappearances being reported from outlying farms that had to be covered up in order to prevent a panic.

Their tactics and loadout had shifted, since that first day. After finding out that their usual sniper rifles weren't heavy enough, one of the SAS men had mentioned that he thought a Boys anti-tank rifle might do the trick, if there were any still around.

As it turned out, the Army had kept a few in storage, along with plenty of ammunition, and while there had been a few raised eyebrows at the armory when he and Frobisher had showed up with a requisition order, they had been happy enough to get rid of them.

The next time they'd managed to track down a group of giants and ambush them, the two snipers had put .55 rounds into the heads of all of them at five hundred yards without much fuss. Said rounds had blown the giants' heads apart.

Once they'd discovered that, they had shifted from carefully plotted ambush sights and plans made a week in advance to a more…dynamic approach. Whenever they had found giant tracks, they had followed them, in two cases actually managing to interrupt an attack before anyone was killed.

So far, they'd killed a hundred and twenty-three giants and not lost a single man.

The anger was because he was fairly certain that Weasley was holding out on them. This particular group they'd found without help from the wizard, much like the previous two.

It didn't make sense. The giants were on the opposite side of the war from Weasley and his friends, supposedly, so why wasn't he trying to get them killed off as quickly as he could?

There were several possibilities, and none of them spoke particularly well of Weasley's fellow wizards, mostly because they amounted to "someone might be upset at the idea that those without magic would dare to defend themselves against those who had it."

To be fair, though he really didn't want to be, the wizards did have a bad history with such, as most of the times such had happened "defending oneself" had crossed into "attempt genocide." The fact was, however, that aside from some incidents in America back in the 1920s, there had been no concerted attempts by Muggles to destroy wizards since the beginning of the 18th century.

Unfortunately, there had been enough isolated incidents that it was very easy to convince many wizards that most Muggles meant them ill, and while there were a few spots where wizards and Muggles lived together, these were few and far between.

"Hello, Roger," Weasley said nearly directly into his ear, and only his long training enabled him to avoid jumping completely out of his skin.

"Don't _do_ that," he reproved, and the other man shrugged.

"Sorry, but I didn't want to have to explain myself to them," he said, nodding toward the SAS men. "I must admit, you killed those giants much more quickly than I thought you would."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I thought it would take you at least two or three years, not just one."

"We Muggles are a resourceful lot," Dalton said quietly.

"Yes. I know," the wizard replied, equally quietly. "Which is why I regret the fact that I need to tell you that you can't get any more involved in this than you already are."

"Old memories die hard, I take it," Dalton said in a dust-dry tone, and Weasley at least had the decency to wince a little.

"Yes, some of our people are a little…irrational…on the topic of Muggle interference, but there are people among us alive now whose grandparents remember when we passed the International Statute of Secrecy."

Dalton filed that tidbit away for future reference—apparently magic made wizards longer-lived, something Rope had always suspected but had never been able to confirm.

However, there were more pressing matters at hand.

"I understand that, but your war's spilled over into our world in more ways than just this one. When I'm not running around the English countryside hunting giants, filling out reports for my superiors, or investigating something peculiar and otherworldly that turns out to be nothing important whatsoever, I'm looking over newspaper articles, looking for various oddities. And one interesting thing is that there's been a spike in animal attacks, mostly canid."

He looked at Weasley. "Do you have any idea what that might be about?"

The look on the wizard's face, unsurprisingly, indicated that he did know what Dalton was talking about and that he did not want to talk about whatever it was.

However, he sighed and nodded. "Yes, I do. Werewolves."

Werewolves.

Of course there were werewolves.

"Are there any other creatures of fable that are involved in this war?"

Weasley paused. "No."

Dalton was somewhat suspicious of that answer, but decided to let it go.

"So are these like your usual werewolves? Full moons, silver bullets and all that good rot?"

Weasley chuckled sadly. "Yes, they transform at the full moon. No, silver doesn't affect them, really. Also, the curse is only spread if the victim is bitten at the full moon and survives the bite. You Muggles don't tend to, for some reason or other."

That was useful information, anyhow. Of course, now he'd have to talk to his superiors about keeping Frobisher and his team to deal with this not-exactly-new threat that he'd just heard about.

There were times when this could be utterly exasperating work.

"You're sure that's it, though? No hobgoblins, fairies, or anything like that?"

"Not as far as we know, but if it turns out that I'm wrong I'll let you know."

"Thank you," Dalton replied, and Weasley nodded.

"Fare you well," he said, and vanished.

Dalton then began the walk over to where Frobisher and his men were looking over the dead giants, and looking quite satisfied with themselves.

As well they should be, Dalton thought. I hate to tell them what's coming next.

How on earth are we going to actually track down _werewolves?_

* * *

August 17, 1971

"What did you end up telling him?" Dumbledore asked Septimus as they sat in his office at Hogwarts.

"I told him about Greyback and his crowd," Septimus said quietly. "That should keep them busy for quite some time just trying to find the beasts."

"Excellent," Dumbledore replied heartily. "Good man. I agree with you. With any luck, we'll have run the Death Eaters to ground by the time this Dalton fellow finds even one pack of them, much less all of Greyback's beasts."

The repetition of the word, "beasts," caused a thought to occur to him, and he looked at Dumbledore. "You're looking to kill two birds with one stone, aren't you Albus?" he asked, and the head of the Order of the Phoenix looked at him innocently.

"Oh?"

"Don't pretend to be a simpleton with me, Albus," Weasley said flatly, "it's unbecoming. You're using these Muggles to destroy some of the creatures that have been plaguing us for years. It's doubtful that the giants will ever be a threat to anyone again, after Dalton and his men killed something like over a hundred of them in less than a year when there weren't more than two hundred in the world, back when the Beings Division did that census fifteen years ago."

He kept going, as Dumbledore's plan opened up before him. "And if any more of them come over the Channel, the Muggles will know how to deal with them, and we won't have to—Merlin knows trying to kill a giant's a chancy business for us at best, but these Muggles do it like it's nothing."

He frowned. "Of course, that would scare some folk, wouldn't it? Most of us would just see it as good riddance to bad rubbish, of course, but some us would realize what the four of us did, that this could mean the Muggles might be able to hunt us. That might cause some of the neutrals to shift towards you-know-who. But if they're floundering about trying to find werewolves, who're much more like us than the giants are even though no one wants to admit that…those worries go away."

He looked at him. "That's why you were so happy that I pointed them at Greyback, isn't it? That, and if they do manage to actually kill a few of them it'll help us."

"Correct, Septimus. Very well reasoned."

* * *

August 17, 1971

Dumbledore bid Weasley farewell as he left his office, and breathed a sigh of relief the moment he knew the man was out of earshot. The man had mostly reasoned it out, but there was one other factor he hadn't realized, because Weasley was, at heart, a good man, a much better man than he.

If the Muggles managed to kill some of Greyback's army, he would seek revenge on Muggles in general, which would point him away from the Order and wizarding neutrals. And right now, he needed as many anti-Voldemort wizards alive as he possibly could.

He wouldn't sleep well if that happened, and the number of dead Muggles if Greyback concentrated on them would almost certainly be an order of magnitude higher than if he split between them and the wizards.

However, the number of dead Muggles if Voldemort managed to take over the Ministry and Wizarding Britain was going to be multiple orders of magnitude higher than even the highest number Greyback and his minions would be able to kill, and you needed wizards to fight wizards.

It was just that simple.

And he hated himself for thinking in those terms, especially because Greyback preferred to turn young children, and usually killed their parents and older siblings when he did, to make sure they had nowhere to go.

But it couldn't be helped.

It was necessary.

Perhaps, if he told himself that enough, he would start to believe it.

* * *

October 30, 1974

Dalton looked through his binoculars at the farmhouse, and hoped that the werewolf pack wouldn't notice him, Frobisher, or any of the other men.

It had taken almost two years to see the pattern of the attacks, because these creatures moved around so, but once knew what it was it was easy to see.

Livestock, guard animals, and pets would go missing, or the bodies would be found looking like they'd been attacked by a wild animal—which, he supposed, they had been. This would go on for about two months. Then, on the third month, a relatively isolated house would be attacked, the family would be slaughtered, and then everything would stop in that locale before it started up again elsewhere.

The only commonality between the houses, besides their isolation, was that they usually belonged to large families. And, on a few occasions, one or two of the children had gone missing, and no one had found them.

That opened up all kinds of unpleasant possibilities, and when the tabloids had noticed the pattern the lurid speculations had run wild.

Satanic rituals had been the least mad notion, with Conservative-leaning newspapers darkly hinting that this was the beginning of Powell's "Rivers of Blood," citing the fact that all of the victims were white native-born Englishmen—which, Dalton thought, might have something to do with the fact that once one left the cities nearly everyone fit that category, and nearly everyone who didn't was wealthy enough to afford security measures that would dissuade attackers. Labour-leaning newspapers, in the meantime, seemed uncertain who to blame, as those with a working-class readership leaned towards the Powellite theory, while those aimed at the middle class were hinting at cabals of pedophile sadists within the social, financial, and political elites.

Combined with all of the other incidents that were going on, it was starting to cause some serious internal trouble in Britain, and the Prime Minister had effectively suspended the Maxwell-Fyfe directive as far as his dealings with wizards and other "magical entities" were concerned. Talking around the Home Secretary had been an issue until Dalton had taken him to the warehouse where they were keeping the corpses of the giants they'd killed on ice. After that, he'd become a true believer—in fact, he had abandoned his usual calm in favor of demanding firm measures be taken against such entities.

While it was good that the government was moving him into a more official status, he had not been given more resources, which had left him rather on the back foot where the werewolves were concerned.

Tonight, that was going to change.

The house in front of them was a perfect target for their quarry. It was miles away from the nearest neighbor, the family had more than a dozen children, and it had been built fairly recently, which meant it wasn't as sturdy as the older farmhouses.

Also, it had been one of the main targets of the werewolves' depredations, there wasn't a single animal outside, and the family huddled indoors after dark.

If they lost this war, that would be the fate of every family in Britain, and Dalton would die before that happened, so he would.

He grimaced at that descent into maudlinness, but it was true. And, hopefully, on this full moon, the pack would come here, and they could kill them.

They were using assault rifles, light sniper rifles, and light machine guns this time, since they weren't dealing with creatures with thick hides. That had made getting into position much easier, and he anticipated some level of pursuit, although he and Frobisher had agreed that the priority would be keeping the men together and protecting the target. He had no intention of putting his men out where they would be easy prey for the werewolves.

"Movement," one of the SAS men whispered, and he lifted the night vision scope up to his eye and nodded. There they were, downwind of the farmhouse. It appeared that there were seven or eight of them, more than enough to wipe out everyone inside the house, and his own team if they weren't careful.

But they had been, making sure to stay well to the side of the route Frobisher had anticipated the pack would take, based on the prevailing winds.

And he'd been right.

The werewolves were moving cautiously, as predators tended to do until they were within sprinting distance. That was good—it meant the snipers would probably be able to get at least one kill apiece, which would make it a lot easier to survive the next few minutes.

He somewhat nervously checked his rifle. He was the least well-trained of the whole group, and he wasn't sure how well he'd do, but Frobisher had insisted, on the grounds that this was very likely to end in close combat, and he was not going to leave Dalton with "a bloody pop-gun," as he'd gestured at his Webley.

He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and put the sights on the nearest monster, keeping his finger off the trigger as Frobisher had told him to do until he gave the signal for the team to fire.

Said signal was going to be the two snipers firing, which was going to happen any second now, why wasn't it…

The twin reports were so close together they were almost one, and two of the werewolves went down hard—it looked their heads had been blown off. According to Weasley, they didn't regenerate, but they were fast, agile, and strong. And they weren't stupid.

They were, however, extraordinarily aggressive, and temperamental. Prudent predators, like actual wolves, would have run and hid from a threat that could kill them at long range. These werewolves were not, as their response was to…charge.

_Fast._

The machinegunners opened fire first, followed by the riflemen, and Dalton followed suit, only to find out that there was a drawback to night vision—muzzle blast tended to overwhelm it, and his retinas.

Fortunately, he'd kept one eye shut, and he'd at least had some training in shooting from his support side over the past year. As he transitioned shoulders, he saw two more forms crumple down in the light of the moon, but they were closing the distance extraordinarily fast, and...

He managed to get another one in his sights, and fired as fast as he could pull the trigger and still keep the muzzle on target.

The werewolf went down, and he swept for another target…just in time to see the last one, bleeding and torn, make one last giant bound and claw out one of the SAS troopers' throats in a shower of blood.

He saw red in that moment, and nearly didn't wait until he was completely on target before he started shooting.

It took him a few seconds to realize that all that was coming out of his rifle was a clicking noise, and he looked down to see an open, empty firing chamber. Then he looked up, and saw the last werewolf lying on the ground next to the soldier it had killed.

He stood there for a moment, stunned.

It wasn't that he hadn't known that the men he led could die.

He just…hadn't really thought that any of them would.

Especially after killing all those giants nearly effortlessly, when they were regarded by the wizards as being much more dangerous than the werewolves were.

And how were they going to explain _those_ injuries, he thought as he took a closer look at the soldier's corpse. This was going to lead all _kinds_ of inconvenient questions.

What kind of person was he, that he was already thinking of how a dead man would make his job more difficult?

His head snapped around when he saw a shape walking towards him, then he relaxed when it spoke and he recognized the voice as Frobisher's.

"Corporal Allan Cooper," he said quietly. "Good man. Saved my life once."

He sighed.

"We'll have to say it was a training accident. Closed-casket funeral."

Dalton swallowed. "Does this sort of thing happen…often?"

Frobisher nodded. "More often than anyone cares to admit."

"I had no idea."

"Which is as it should be."

"Yes, that's so." Dalton shook himself. "Right. Call in the transports. You get this mess cleaned up while I go talk to the family about why they need to pretend this never happened."


	5. Chapter 5

December 2, 1974

Septimus felt more than a little sick as he read the London _Times_ , which he'd begun subscribing to a few years ago. "Outrages Continue!" the headline blared, and the articles below made it very clear why no wizarding families had come under attack this past full moon.

Greyback and his monsters had decided to take vengeance on the Muggles who had had the temerity to fight back against them, and they'd struck in at least three places during the last full moon, killing more than a dozen Muggles with at least three or four missing. One of the tabloids he'd seen had mentioned that one of the coroners thought he might be able to account for at least one missing person once he finished putting all the body parts back together.

However, he wasn't sick because of _that_. By now he'd seen as bad or worse, in the aftermath of either Death Eater, werewolf, or giant attacks.

No, he felt sick because he felt _relieved._ As long as the werewolf packs went after the Muggles, they weren't going after wizards. His friends. His family.

And what did it say about him that he was perfectly willing for others' friends and families to die in order that his might live? Nothing good.

He couldn't talk with Dumbledore about this, because he knew that he would just remind him, again, that it was for the greater good.

And it was.

But if all he cared about was the greater good, he would feel nothing but regret that this had happened.

But that wasn't what he felt.

He hated this war.

* * *

December 3, 1974

Dalton looked at the empty bottle in front of him, then looked up at Frobisher.

"We seem," he said, enunciating very carefully, "to have run out of whiskey."

"So we have," the major replied as he looked at the wall, then turned his head slowly to look at him. "Should we do something about it?"

Dalton opened his mouth to say they should, but stopped himself and thought for a moment. Should they?

Yes, they were technically off-duty today. But that would not be the case tomorrow, and he'd already drunk enough that he was going to have a wicked hangover once this wore off.

"As much as I'd like to, we probably shouldn't."

Frobisher cursed. "I was thinking that too. I was hoping you would talk me out of it and into another bottle."

Dalton was in full agreement. The papers were wrong—the werewolves had struck in half a dozen places over the full moon. The only reason they'd managed to keep some of them quiet was because in two cases the families that had been attacked were Travellers, and in another the family were just drifters. There had been none of the usual indicators around any of the targeted areas, which meant he and the SAS hadn't known where to go, and as a result more than twenty people were dead or missing and his superiors were screaming at him to Do Something.

He sighed. "Never thought it would happen like this."

Frobisher sighed as well. "I should have told you that was how this would go."

Dalton's head snapped up. "You knew this would happen?"

"No. I thought something like it could happen, though. I've fought men like these werewolves before. Malaysia, Aden, Oman, Ire—you didn't hear that—and they're always the same. They see no reason they can't do what they want, but any action against them? They'll take revenge ten times over, against whoever's closest to hand."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want to let it stop you from doing what you needed to do," Frobisher said flatly. "You're wondering, right now, if you would have had us lay that ambush if you'd known what the consequences would be. Tell me I lie."

Dalton winced. He was wondering that, actually. Wondering if he would have been strong enough to give the order to set up the ambush, knowing that innocent civilians would die.

Wondering if he could give the order to lay another one.

But he had to, didn't he? This spree wouldn't stop because he stopped killing the werewolves. The only way to stop it would be to either kill them or scare them enough that they'd stop going after people.

"You bastard," he said to Frobisher.

The commando nodded. "I know. That's what I have to be. And what you'll have to be, unless I miss my guess. This war's not going to get any lovelier."

Dalton looked at the bottle again. "On second thought, one more drink."

"I thought you might say that."

* * *

March 30, 1975

Septimus looked at an extremely haggard Dalton and wondered how he looked to the other man. The war was straining both of them, that much was more than obvious, especially now that the werewolves weren't engaging in their usual scouting and terrorizing before attacking.

"How many this time?" he asked quietly.

"Two dozen," his comrade replied, just as quietly, in between taking pulls from the pint of beer. "Any more of yours?"

"No," he said. "From what we're hearing, Greyback is still focused on terrorizing you into letting him do what he wants." He paused, afraid to ask but knowing he had to. "What are you going to do, anyway?"

Dalton sighed, and Septimus feared the worst. "Whatever we can do, which isn't much."

He winced, but his hands were tied. They couldn't give the Muggles the help they needed to actually be able to ambush the werewolves—the Order was too busy trying to deal with the Death Eaters.

And, so far, he and Dumbledore were the only members who were willing to actually work with non-wizards—he wished Scamander and his wife were part of the order, but that accident had made Newt unfit for battle and barely functional otherwise, and Porpentina had to take care of him.

Dumbledore was busy overseeing the Order's operations, and he…he…was he really that busy?

He looked at Dalton for a moment. The signs were obvious. Dark circles under his eyes, a nose that was a bit redder than it really should have been, the beard stubble that had never been there before…

"Still no luck?"

"No. We nearly managed to get one night before last, but the wind shifted to where they were downwind instead of upwind of us." He looked utterly disgusted, and Septimus didn't blame him. He'd had an ambush go that way before.

He made his decision and leaned forward. "Could you use some assistance?"

Dalton looked up sharply. "Excuse me?"

"Believe it or not, I don't like seeing your people killed any more than you do. I'm tired of standing by and doing nothing."

"How are you going to help us?" Dalton asked. "I doubt you can transport us, and unless you have some kind of source inside the werewolves I don't think you can tell us where they're going to strike."

"I can't tell you where they are," Septimus said, "but I can give you some information that might be useful. And I might," he continued, "be able to help you not have to worry about which way the wind blows."

Dalton smiled then, in a way that told the wizard that he never wanted to really get on the Muggle's bad side.

After all, unless you managed to catch the shooter getting into position, what good was magic against a weapon that could kill you from half a mile away?

* * *

July 23, 1975

Dalton crouched under his ghillie suit as he looked through the night-vision binoculars at the farm, where yet another large family were unaware of what was probably going to happen outside their doors tonight.

Weasley had really come through, and while he was a little angry that he hadn't given them the information sooner, now that they had it they should be able to hunt the werewolves better.

For one thing, they didn't much like to strike when it was wet, for some reason or another—Weasley thought that was something Greyback instilled rather than something common to werewolves, and Dalton was inclined to take his word for it. Not that he had much choice, but it was his inclination.

That allowed them to narrow down potential areas to those which were not experiencing rain, which in Great Britain, even in summer, was relatively rare.

Also, they tended to avoid areas where others of their kind had been slain before or where they thought there might be defenses, something that was apparently common to werewolves, as well as other predators, which meant that his men wouldn't have to deploy near either place where they'd actually spotted a pack.

Finally, they also tended to avoid houses that had a lot of open space around them, something he was kicking himself for not really noticing.

There was also the—whatever-it-was—that Weasley had given them that didn't just mask scent, it completely removed it. He'd tested it out by having one of the SAS men take some of it and then sending a bloodhound out after him. The dog had been utterly baffled, and at that point he'd known that they were in business.

So this time, they'd set up in the best ambush position there was in the area, not the best one that happened to be upwind of what he hoped was one of the targets tonight. If it wasn't…well, the odds were better that they were in the right place than at any point in months. Best not to worry until they knew one way or the other.

"Target, ten o'clock" he heard one of the SAS men say, and he carefully turned his head in that direction. Yes, there they were, coming in quiet and careful.

But not careful enough.

"Wait for it lads," Frobisher said quietly. "Wait for it…wait for it… _now._ "

They'd learned from that first encounter with them, and this time the pack was smaller—only six, instead of nearly a dozen. The snipers opened fire first, and the two monsters at the back of the pack went down. Then two more, and they finally realized what was happening.

Not that it really mattered, since there was only two left and they were charging towards the team in full fury. It didn't matter much, though.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder and opened fire on the one on the right, along with the other men on that side. The monster slid to a halt, dead, and he turned to the other only to see that it, too, was dead.

It had been a good night.

* * *

July 25, 1975

"It appears that the Muggles have scored another success, Septimus," Dumbledore said mildly, and Septimus grimaced on the inside while maintaining a carefully blank expression on the outside.

"That seems like it would be good news, Albus," he replied. "I thought you'd be rather pleased."

"I am. And I am also worried. Mostly because there aren't _that_ many werewolves, Septimus. When they finish them off or Greyback finally decides to cut his losses and run, what will they do then?"

"At this rate, it will take them years to do that. That's plenty of time." Weasley paused for moment. "Shouldn't it be?"

"It isn't," Dumbledore said grimly. "The war isn't going well, Septimus. Greyback focusing on the Muggles instead of wizards gave us a little bit of breathing room, but it's not enough. The Death Eaters are still attacking anyone they can. Two nights ago, we lost Sanus Fairweather and his son."

Weasley sat back. Sanus had been a friend, a good one, especially to have at your back in a fight.

"What happened?"

"They were at home, and someone shut down their defenses. We don't know who, but I suspect his cousin.

"That twit Halgus?" Weasley had always wondered about him—he'd never expressed any kind of pureblood supremacy ideas, but that was mostly because even thinking that much about something other than himself would require far too much effort on his part.

"Possibly. I don't think he would have known who he was doing it for. But whether he knew or not, they were able to gain entry, and while Sanus had some secondary spells prepared, they weren't enough to give him enough time to get out. It did give him enough time to kill at least one."

Weasley wasn't surprised by that at all. "How's Marissa taking it?"

"As well as could be expected," Dumbledore said levelly. "Everyone's working on increasing their houses' defenses, but there's no way to keep someone out who's willing to do what it takes to get in."

"So what do you want me to do, Albus? Slow the Muggles down?" Weasley really didn't want to think about what he might end up doing if Dumbledore did tell him to deliberately slow them down again. He was pretty sure he wouldn't actually do it, but that was not a decision he wanted to make.

"I don't know what I want you to do," Dumbledore said wearily. "If these Muggles can rid us of Greyback, that might force Voldemort back on the defensive and give the Order more of a chance to recover."

He leaned forward, and stared at Weasley intently. "But under no circumstances will you allow a wizard to come to harm at their hands. Any wizard. Even Voldemort himself. You understand why."

He did. Merlin help him, he did.

* * *

September 20, 1975

"Is something wrong, dad?" Arthur asked, and Septimus looked at his favorite son and wondered what to tell him.

"Nothing that isn't the matter with everyone, these days," he finally said, and Arthur nodded. Worry was the common emotion to all of Wizarding Britain-possibly including the Death Eaters.

He hoped so, anyway. It wouldn't be right if they managed to escape that.

"How has that project I asked about gone?" He asked.

"Quite well..." his son began.

"Septimus," his wife, Cassiopeia, reproved, "this is supposed to be a meal with our son and his wife. No talking about...outside things."

"Of course, Cassie," he said with a repentant smile and gesture in Arthur and Molly's direction. "I forgot myself."

"Hmph," she said. "You'll be glad to know that I didn't forget dessert. Now, no talking shop while I go get it, you two."

It would have been more accurate, Septimus thought, had she told the three of them not to talk shop. Molly was as dedicated as Arthur was to the Order's work, even though she didn't always see how his projects could really help them. Even so, he could tell that Cassie would brook no opposition, and so he simply gave his son a look that said they would talk later.

Later took a bit longer to arrive than he would have liked, but as Arthur and Molly put on their coats he stood and said that he'd see them out.

Cassie knew what he was doing, of course, but the proprieties had been observed. And besides, she was just as interested in what Arthur was doing as he was, perhaps more so. She just knew that once they started talking about the war they wouldn't stop.

"How goes the project, Arthur?" He asked in the front hallway.

His son ran his hand through his hair. Septimus knew he didn't really like doing what he was doing, presently. Arthur was a rather peaceable sort, for all that he wouldn't shirk the fight, and he wanted to do things like enchant cars to fly or find out about Muggle children's toys.

Instead...

"I've looked over that...gun...you found for me, Dad. I think I know how it works, and I've actually fired it a couple of times. Makes a frightful noise, and it kicks back against you. It's not like a wand. It also sends the...bullets...through things. The last one I fired went through two boards before it was stopped by a third. I don't know of any spell that can do that."

He paused. "This isn't one of their more powerful devices, is it?"

Septimus reminded himself that Arthur's occasional flightiness was the result of slight absentmindedness, not a lack of brains.

"No, it is not. I only got you that one to investigate because it practically fell into my hands."

Which was no more than the truth. The cutpurse had been rather surprised when he'd responded to his threat by disarming and then Obliviating him. It had helped that Septimus had some advantages, like hard-won experience in recognizing when someone was trying to shadow him, and that his reflexes were better.

Arthur sighed, and cursed. Septimus raised his eyebrows at that, and his son gave him a slightly shamefaced look before he spoke. "Dad, if this is one of their less powerful weapons, we need to be much more careful than we have been. Who knows what else they've devised?" He paused. "That reminds me of something rather odd I heard, the day before yesterday. Two Muggles were talking about when the Americans dropped a fat man and a little boy on a city to end a war. Why would dropping a fat man and a little boy on a city end a war?"

Septimus blinked. "That does seem…peculiar. But that's not really important right now. Thank you for testing this out, nephew. I might have something new for you in the next few weeks."

Arthur looked at him. "Will it be another weapon?"

"Most likely."

Arthur sighed. "Damn this war. Can't we just kill You-know-who and get it over with?"

"I wish we could, Arthur. I wish we could."

"I know. I'll try to see if I can work on something that might could break these things. I wish I knew why electricity doesn't work at Hogwarts."

Weasley could spot the signs of his son starting himself up one of his speculations that, if it really got going would last until dawn, but before he could go any further Molly spoke up. "Dear, I'm sure your father would like to go to bed."

"What? Oh, yes, of course."

Septimus shot his daughter-in-law a grateful glance, and she nodded as if to tell him to think nothing of it. Once they said their farewells and Arthur and Molly left the house, he closed the door, went back to the living room, and wondered if he should ask Dalton about the Americans and their strange method of ending a war. Perhaps it might help Wizarding Britain with its current problem.

* * *

April 19, 1976

"No, Septimus, we can't risk it."

"Dumbledore, be reasonable. This could…"

"No, Septimus. I'm glad that your nephew demonstrated that we can use Muggle weapons, because it might be useful in the future, but we cannot use them for the same reason that we can't have the Muggles put a bullet in Voldemort's head!"

"What? It would be us using them, not…"

"Septimus, your son is already viewed askance because of his experiments with relatively benign Muggle things that aren't designed to kill people. _I_ think his obsession is a little odd. Now just imagine what the reaction would be if someone discovered that we were using Muggle weapons to kill fellow wizards."

Septimus ground his teeth. "So calling in werewolves and giants and throwing about Unforgivable Curses is fine by the Wizarding World, but Merlin forbid we use a bullet instead of a spell."

"That's how it is," Dumbledore said flatly. "You know as well as I do that there's more than a few wizards and witches who still aren't sure which side they're on, in addition to all the people who just want this war to be over. If we start using Muggle weapons, that's going to give the Death Eaters another lever. Everything you just listed is at least magical. Guns aren't, and you know how that scares some of the others. Honestly, they scare me—and you, I know."

Septimus looked at Dumbledore. "I think you got too used to magical carnage during the war with Grindelwald. Do the guns scare me? Yes. I'm still terrified of what they could mean for us. But what the Death Eaters do terrifies me more."

The older man's eyes flashed before he spoke, with some restraint. "You might, perhaps, be correct as to our…differing perspectives. But please remember that I've fought this kind of war and you haven't. You may wish to speak with Newt Scamander about what happens when the authorities become overzealous."

Septimus had heard the story of what happened in Paris, when the Ministry had been stupid enough to try and arrest Grindelwald while outnumbered by dozens to one. He didn't think the situations were comparable at all.

He would still trust Dumbledore's judgment, even though it rankled.

"I will do as you ask," he said. "If you will excuse me, Albus, I have business to attend to."

As he got up, he thought about whether or not he would have responded so before his dealings with Rope and Dalton. Perhaps the Muggles were rubbing off on him.

Once that thought would have horrified him. Perhaps it was a sign of how much they'd affected him that it no longer did so.

No, it definitely was. Was that a good thing? He didn't know if he wanted to think more like a Muggle.

On the other hand, wasn't that what the Death Eaters were all about? Being against things simply because they were from the Muggles?

He sighed. Maybe Arthur was right after all, about it being important to learn about and from the Muggles instead of just leaving them to their own devices except when playing tricks on them. He'd have to apologize to his son, right enough. Curse it.


	6. Chapter 6

July 15, 1978

This might be the last night that he had to hunt a werewolf pack.

That was the thought that ran through Dalton's mind as he swept his head from side to side, looking for any sign of unusual movement.

Unfortunately, it was also the night that the stakes were at their very highest.

The werewolves were down to one pack, now, and from what they'd gathered from the one they'd captured on the last hunt, it was the one was the one led by their leader, who bore the ludicrous name "Fenrir Greyback."

Ludicrous name or not, however, that was the only thing even remotely funny about him. He apparently preferred to turn _children_ into werewolves, and the younger the better, which was why the people who had gone missing after werewolf attacks had almost never been adults and why all the places that had been attacked had been inhabited by large families.

And by now, he was utterly desperate to rebuild his packs, or so their one prisoner had said after he had turned back into a human and realized that he had been captured by the men who had been hunting his kind for the past few years. In fact, he'd fallen all over himself to give them as much information as possible.

Which was why he and Frobisher and the other SAS men were here, near one of the last orphanages in England, which was slated to be closed in the next five years. It was also the most isolated, and the prisoner had mentioned that it was to be Greyback's next target. Even if only one in ten of the victims survived, it would nearly double the pack's numbers, and that would give him the seed corn he'd need to come back.

They couldn't allow any of that to happen, and besides, this was a chance to end the werewolf scourge for good and all.

They'd executed their prisoner once the interrogation was over. After all, he'd committed multiple acts of murder on English soil, and Dalton hadn't much approved of abolishing the death penalty—and none of the SAS men had objected. The only real problem had been determining who would get to fire the fatal shot, something they'd resolved by drawing straws.

Frobisher got the long one.

Dalton suspected that he'd cheated.

Two bursts of static came in over the radio, then two more.

Dalton cursed. Greyback had gotten smart and switched up his tactics. Instead of coming in from the downwind side, like every other time the werewolves had attacked, they were coming in from the upwind side. The only reason they even had anybody up there was because Frobisher liked having at least some sort of cover for every contingency.

He rose as the others did, and without speaking, because there was no need to do so, they ran towards the orphanage, all thoughts of stealth forgotten in their haste. Even scaring the werewolves off would be something of a victory, anyway, and would be a sight better than letting them into the building, where nearly all of the defenders' advantages would go away and the werewolves would be able to use their greater size, strength, and speed to its deadliest effect.

Fortunately, they'd set up close to the main building, since its not-particularly-well-kept hedges made for excellent concealment. They'd also made sure that they had a clear route through the building, so they wouldn't need to run around the old pile.

Of course, they'd had to explain to the head of the orphanage why they were there, but while he wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to have a former MI6 woman in charge of children, Emily Duncan at least understood the what the words "necessary for the defence of the realm," "need-to-know," and "for the children's safety" meant.

She had even moved all of them into one section of the orphanage, where she was currently sitting in front of the only way in with a pump-action shotgun in her lap loaded with buckshot.

Both he and Frobisher had decided not to ask if it was quite legal for her to have the thing in her possession.

Those thoughts distracted him from the fact that both his legs and lungs were burning as he pushed his forty-year-old body past what he would have thought were its limits, and he still was unable to keep up with the SAS men, including Frobisher. Despite being closer to the door inside than any of the others, he was the last to reach it, albeit not by much, and by the time they made it to the other side of the building he was twenty feet behind the last soldier, as his heart hammered against his sternum and his legs threatened to go on a miner's strike.

And just then, as he cleared the door's threshold, the first werewolf scrambled over the hedge.

The SAS riflemen opened fire and blew him? Her? It? away, but another came up right behind, and he added his rifle to the cacophony as the men carrying the Vickers guns desperately tried to set up them up before the rest arrived.

That one fell quickly, but there were two right behind it, and everyone had to reload save him. He put the rest of his magazine into it, then frantically scrabbled for a full one as he dropped the empty one out of the well and the commandos opened fire, having managed to reload themselves.

But almost before the two werewolves had fallen, four more swarmed over the hedge, and it was less than fifty yards from there to their position—and this time, the werewolves had had a moment to look at the situation before bullets started flying their way.

Which was why they leapt, rather than simply dropping down to the turf, covering half the distance between them and the commandos in a single bound, crashing to the ground with enough force that he could feel it a little.

But that was not enough to frighten him or those with him from doing what needed to be done, and they opened fire before the werewolves had a chance to leap again—joined by the machine guns, who finished the job the rifles had started.

They frantically reloaded in the sudden stillness, wondering when the next monsters would come leaping over the wall. Perhaps they'd run, and they'd need to do this all over again, or…

The sounds of a shotgun firing slammed into their ears, and Dalton felt his second wind come on as he realized what Greyback had done. He'd deliberately thrown his followers away in order to get around their flank, and he cursed himself for underestimating the monster even as he turned and ran back towards the open door of the orphanage, praying that they could get there in time to keep Greyback—for presumably he had not sacrificed himself—and whoever was with him from slaughtering or turning all of the children.

The orphanage was three stories high, and they'd crammed all of the children into the part of the third floor with the thickest walls. He didn't know why the original builders had constructed an entire side of the building with four-inch-thick oak walls and a door that locked on the inside _and_ the outside, and wasn't sure if he wanted to, but he was grateful for it, especially now.

Two of the SAS men, Williams and Cobham, made it past him before he could reach the door, and another, Folkstone, made it to the staircase before he did. They all pelted up the stairs, and he managed to somehow keep up with them, despite the fact that his lungs were burning and he was puffing like a bellows. When the first two made it to the third floor hallway, he heard Cobham cursing, and, fearing the worst, managed to push himself that little bit faster, and saw a brutal scene before him.

A werewolf lay on the floor, its head and torso pulped by multiple close range buckshot rounds. Duncan was…all over that end of the hallway. All over it. He felt like he was about to vomit, before he finally registered the hulking figure that he presumed was Greyback pulling and scratching furiously at the door.

The werewolf must have sensed their presence, because he turned and snarled at them. Williams and Cobham both charged forward, though why Dalton did not know, and he and Folkstone raised their rifles to their shoulders and prepared to fire.

He realized what they were doing when the two men split to the left and right, grabbing the werewolf's arms and pinning him against the wall. They couldn't hope to hold him for any length of time at all, but they didn't have to, because he and Folkstone started putting bullets in the creature, firing on semiautomatic as quickly as they possibly could.

Five seconds later, their magazines were empty, the werewolf had collapsed on the floor, and Cobham was dead. The monster had managed, in its final moments, to push the slighter commando off of him, and then torn his throat out with his claws in a last act of defiance.

Then Dalton saw it twitch, looked at Folkstone, and nodded.

They reloaded, and each put another magazine into it, as did the others once they got upstairs.

By the time they were done, he was reduced to doll rags.

It was still less than he deserved.

When it was done, Frobisher spoke. "Clean this mess up. I'd rather the children not see this. Make sure you get as much of Miss Duncan as you can. She _will_ have a funeral with honors. As to the carrion, we'll do the same thing with it as we've done to all the rest."

They all nodded. There was a trash midden back at their headquarters where they'd burned all the other werewolves. The boffins hadn't even wanted to look at them, not after the giants had confounded everything they thought they knew about biology. Some things they just didn't want to deal with.

He could live with that, honestly. Weasley hadn't asked him what they'd done with the bodies, and he wasn't sure how the wizard would have reacted to the idea that they'd been dissected and studied in a lab.

Poorly, he suspected. Not because he particularly cared about the monsters—Dalton had the impression that giants and werewolves and other non-human magical entities got short shrift among the wizards—but because he was so chary of sharing out knowledge.

He understood that, to be sure. Secrecy was the wizards' best protection—but even so, it was not a tolerable situation in the long term, and he knew that some of the boffins were working on magic detectors, working with their fellows in America, France, and Germany. They'd made little progress so far, but that wouldn't last forever.

His world and Septimus' were going to collide again at some point.

The only question was whether it would be like this or something much more gentle.

He hoped for the latter.

* * *

September 20, 1978

Septimus looked around. It was rare for so many of the Order to all gather in one place—in fact, the last time he could remember so many at a single meeting was at the formation of the Order, nearly a decade ago, now.

It was a great risk they ran. This place was secret, and the wards were thick, but if the Death Eaters got lucky it would be the end of the Order.

Still, things had gotten better over the past few years. The Death Eaters had initially been able to make up for the werewolves' decision to go after the Muggles, but in the process had gotten sloppy. An attempted attack on Ottery-Saint-Catchpole had been foiled when a green recruit had lit his wand up when he got tangled in a thornbush and needed to extract himself, though the shouting and yelling had also been a clue. By the time it was all over, ten Death Eaters were dead, at least one more was wounded, and the defenders had suffered only minor injuries.

That was one of the more extreme examples, but where before every victory had been paid for by a defeat, now the balance seemed to have shifted decisively in the Order's favor.

That could change, though—the early days of the war had seen the Death Eaters go from victory to victory, until the Order had gathered itself to oppose them. Something could always change—for example, if the wizards of Central and Eastern Europe decided to intervene in the war on Voldemort's side. He did not expect that Western Europe and the Nordics would let such go unanswered, but he did not want Britain to become a battlefield in a wider war.

Even so, the mood among the members of the Order was much lighter than it had been in some time, and he smiled when he saw James Potter throw back his head and laugh at some joke Frank Longbottom had made while Lily Evans and Alice Longbottom shook their heads.

He broke out of his thoughts when he noticed his son standing beside him. "Have you made further progress in your research, Arthur?"

"When I can. Molly's got her hands full taking care of our five boys, which means I have to take over some of what she used to do. But it's coming along."

"Good." They needed to understand these Muggle devices better, and Arthur was quite pleased to not be spending all of his time on weapons.

His son took a moment to look about the room. "There's too many of us absent," he said quietly, and Septimus nodded.

"This war has gone on far too long."

"Do you think it might be over soon?"

"Perhaps—" Weasley broke off when he saw Dumbledore step up to the podium.

He cleared his throat, and the room fell quiet.

"Fenrir Greyback has gone to Europe," Dumbledore announced. There was some murmuring at that, and he let it go on for a moment before clearing his throat again. "Apparently, he's going to try and recruit some more werewolves personally, since they've stopped coming here unprompted, and his last pack was destroyed recently."

"What, they couldn't handle it when their prey turned on them? Typical cowardice from their kind," he heard someone say, and he noticed that James, Lily, and their mutual friend Sirius Black all tensed up suddenly, while Remus Lupin, another friend of theirs, had no expression on his face whatsoever.

That was odd. Why?

He didn't think on it more, however, as Dumbledore continued. "He may not return for some time."

"That's going to get You-know-who's knickers in a twist," Potter said with a laugh. "Are we going to take advantage of it?" he asked, in a much more serious tone.

Some of the older members looked a bit affronted, which Septimus understood. He thought Potter was a bit free with his words, especially considering his youth. But it could not be denied that the lad had fire, and he'd managed some very tricky operations. He'd defied You-know-who personally twice, for Merlin's sake!

As a result, he was willing to let some impertinence slide, as, he could tell, were Dumbledore and Mad-Eye. And if neither of them were willing to say something, none of the others in the older set would either.

"Yes, though not in the way I expect you would prefer, Mr Potter. We're not going to take the offensive, as appealing as that is. I need not remind everyone here that we are still outnumbered, despite the Death Eaters' loss of the giants and the werewolves. The balance is not in our favor—it is merely less unfavorable than it has been."

There were some very disappointed murmurs at that, mostly from the younger set. Those present who were his age looked more relieved than anything, and Septimus agreed. The opportunity to take a breather would benefit the Order more than the Death Eaters—for one thing, members of the Order had more people who, for their own safety, needed to go to the colonies, current or former.

He had to admit that he'd been worried that the MACUSA would end up intervening on You-know-who's side of things, given their rules about relationships with Muggles, or, as they called them, "No-Madjs."

However, as it turned out, outside of New York those rules tended to be honored more in the breach than the observance, and even the diehard separatists mostly just wanted to be left alone. There might have been three or four Death-Eaters who'd gone to Ilvermorney, as near as anybody could tell—a pittance compared to the two or three dozen wizards from Durmstrang who'd joined up with Voldemort.

As he thought about it, though, it was a little disturbing that Voldemort had been able to attract foreign volunteers and the Order hadn't. Perhaps it was because the Order didn't go out and actively recruit? That might be it.

He hoped it was, anyway. The alternative was not something that bore thinking on.

"We will further gather ourselves, and increase the defenses around those places where Wizards and Muggles live near each other. It is likely that the Dark Lord will seek to attack one of them, so as give his followers a dramatic victory to offset this loss."

"The last one went rather badly for them," Fabian Prewett pointed out. "Are you sure they'll try it again?"

"He'll send some who can walk without tripping over their own feet, this time," his brother Gideon replied.

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. Which is why we will need to be prepared. I will be discussing your assignments with each of you."

* * *

March 29, 1979

Dalton was an immensely frustrated man. It had been nearly a year since the attack on the orphanage, and while there hadn't been another werewolf attack, there had been more incidents involving magic, some of them deadly, than there had been even in the past few years.

The weather been rather colder and gloomier than usual as well, which had only added to what some were calling "The Winter of Discontent." There had also been a vote of no confidence in the government yesterday—it had lost. Badly.

He was of two minds about that. On the one hand, Callaghan hadn't really given him much support. However, he had stayed out of Dalton's way and let him use what he had been given as he saw fit—by now, he was practically independent of MI5.

Thatcher, however, was an unknown quantity to him. He hadn't really given much attention to what was going on that didn't have to do with his mission to keep non-magical Britain safe and to find out more about the wizards, but from everything he'd heard she seemed like the type to be very enthusiastic about his mission. While that could lead to an increase in support, that could also mean that she would attempt to micromanage the operation at the same time.

At any rate, he doubted that she would be intimidated when the Minister of Magic stepped through the fireplace. His only real worry was that she might say something that would provoke whoever it was, or inadvertently reveal that his operation existed—she'd been briefed on it, as leader of the Opposition.

That thought, however, returned him to the real source of his frustration. Contact with the wizards was almost always on their terms, and almost never on his. He supposed that was to be expected, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

Especially because, aside from Weasley, and some very interesting rumors about a village called Ottery St Catchpole, those contacts were negative.

The most recent attack was a prime example. The Traveller caravan had been on a back road in Sussex when the wizards hit it. Whoever it was had amused themselves by torturing the family before killing them and then burning everything. He didn't know exactly what had happened, and he didn't really want to know, either. The coroner who'd done the inquest had said that some of what had been done should not have been possible to do without killing someone from shock, but that they'd lived through it anyway.

What he did know was that he wanted whoever had done it, and wanted them bad.

But he knew that they'd never manage that unless they figured out some way to detect or break through magic—and, perhaps, neutralize it.

He pondered the thought for a moment. Did he want that to happen? Weasley was a good fellow, and surely most wizards were more like him than they were like the ones who went after Muggles—if they weren't, there would be many more incidences like the one in Sussex than there actually were. And after working in the government for two decades, now, he knew that the moment there was a reliable way to detect magic that he, or his successor, would suddenly become the Witchfinder General. And that was if whoever was Prime Minister at the time was smart.

If he—or she, he thought, remembering Thatcher—the job would go to someone who didn't know anything about the matter and thought that ferreting out and ending the latest danger to public safety would get him a promotion or two. And that, he somehow knew, would lead to a war—a war that neither side wanted, and neither side would win.

On the other hand—on the other hand, based on the information he had managed to get from his counterparts, while Britain was the only place where there was an actual war going on, other wizarding countries were having much the same dispute, just in more…peaceful fashion.

And the ones who were the least inclined to rein in the sort of thing that happened to those Travellers were much more active in trying to spread their influence than the others were.

Yes. He hoped the boffins succeeded. Now he just needed to find a successor with the right attitude, and to convince the Prime Minister to sign over the deployment of any such device to his department.

He'd try to get that done in the next few months. Getting Thatcher to agree to that seemed like it would be much more difficult than getting Callaghan to agree to it.


	7. Chapter 7

November 20, 1979

Dalton stood on London Bridge with his new assistant—and probable successor, barring something truly odd happening—George Craig, who, like him, had not been pleased to discover where he'd been assigned. And, like him, once he understood both how important and how unregimented the work was, he'd taken to it with a will.

Right as things were completely coming apart.

The Death Eaters were focusing on killing his people, now, rather than going after wizards and occasionally killing one or six normal people. There had been half-a-dozen mysterious "home invasions" that had evidence that didn't make any sense to anyone who didn't know about magic in the past month alone.

To make matters worse, reports from Norway and West Germany were that the wizards in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe were inclined towards the Death Eaters, to the point where more than a few had joined them, and the Americans and the French were battening down the hatches and doing their best to stay out of things.

It was the Spanish Civil War all over again, but this time his country was Spain. And the side that needed to win was losing.

The Prime Minister wasn't happy, and he didn't blame her. The problem was that there was still no way for any of the governments to put any sort of pressure on their wizards to actually do something—the boffins were still years away from finding a way to detect magic, according to them.

He appreciated their honesty, but he would have preferred for them to have something for him. Right now Frobisher and his men were languishing, training and preparing for a call that never came and wondering if their services would be better used over in Northern Ireland. There was some hope, though—the Americans had finally decided to allow the Japanese into the Group of Five and turn it into the Group of Six. Perhaps they could help.

He wondered for a moment what Moscow or Beijing knew about the wizards and how they'd done at controlling them.

He snorted. They wouldn't have any idea how to deal with people who could vanish at the drop of a hat. The only place the Soviets had use for subtlety was in spycraft.

He then wondered if the Chinese and American wizards had fought the Japanese ones during the war in the Pacific. From what Weasley had mentioned, there had been some kind of fight going on among the wizards while Europe was in flames—perhaps that had extended to Asia?

That might have been why it had taken so long for the Americans to bring the Japanese fully into the fold. His father had fought the Germans, but his uncle had fought in Burma. The former had fought with honor and decency, mostly, though they'd been utterly bestial to their own people. The Japanese, though—they had been utterly ruthless towards _everyone._ The stories of what they'd done to captured soldiers made his skin crawl.

Which brought him back to the present problem, and why he and Craig were here. Someone had found Jim Rope, and while the old man hadn't gone quietly—it seemed that he'd killed at least one of the attackers—he'd still been brutally killed. And Dalton wanted blood.

There were _rules_ to this game, and one of them was that you didn't touch the retired. Out of the game was out of the game. So he'd arranged a meeting.

They were supposed to meet Weasley here, but the man was more than an hour late, and he was starting to grow concerned. If the wizard wasn't necessarily a friend, they had still worked well together—and besides, who knew what his replacement would be like?

"Hello," a familiar voice said from far too close to them, and Dalton's hand went to his gun as turned to see Weasley leaning on the railing about ten feet away from them.

"Don't _do_ that," Dalton reproved, and the wizard shrugged.

"New assistant?" he asked.

"Yes. Meet George Craig. I've still got a few years until I retire, but I remember how long it took Rope to get me settled in. Speaking of which…"

"Not here. Come with me." Weasley strode away, leaving Dalton and Craig to follow in his wake. He kept his hand on the semiautomatic pistol in his pocket, and not for the first time wished there was some way for him to carry a rifle on his person without everyone noticing.

They followed him for several blocks, ducking through nearly every alley they came across, before Weasley finally stopped behind what Dalton assumed was a block of flats.

"You want the wizards who killed Rope," were the first words out of the wizard's mouth.

"Yes."

"You can't have them," he said bitterly. "For the same reasons that I can't help you and your men find Death Eaters and kill them."

Craig looked at Dalton questioningly. "Imagine what would happen if some Jamaicans beat some BNP thugs to death," the older man explained. "Only it would probably be worse."

The younger man frowned for a moment, then nodded, and Dalton turned back to Weasley.

"Is there anything you or we can do?" he asked.

"No. I have direct orders. I'm sorry. The moment I find something you can do, I'll tell you."

"One thing," Dalton asked. "How did they find out about about Rope?"

A spasm of guilt flashed across Weasley's face, and he could see the wizard try to maintain his composure. "It didn't leak to them. No one who knows about our little arrangement is with the Death Eaters. We all despise them. My guess is that at some point one of them saw me meet with him, and decided to make him the next target, to get at me. They're petty like that."

Dalton scowled. It was never pleasant to hear that deaths that meant much to you were simply a way to get at someone else.

"I'm sorry," Weasley continued. "But I must go before we're seen."

And with that, he made a quick flicking motion with his wand and vanished.

Craig looked at Dalton. "Is this what it's always been like?"

"These past few years? Yes."

* * *

April 5, 1980

Septimus crouched next to the Prewett brothers in the shadows of the house. It was not an easy thing, what they were doing, but it was necessary.

The Death Eaters had shifted from targeting Muggles to targeting wizards again, once people had started to lower their guards, and the outcry from the attacks had led to Millicent Bagnold replacing Harold Minchum. He'd never liked Minchum much—yes, the man hated the Dark Arts and the Dark Lord, but Septimus didn't know what placing more Dementors around Azakaban was supposed to do about the Death Eaters, considering how few of the latter there were in the place.

Bagnold, however, seemed to favor a more…aggressive…approach, as seen in the fact that she'd given even more power to Barty Crouch, which he had mixed feelings about. He was willing to take the war to the Death Eaters, but his iron fist didn't always land in the right place.

The only real bright spot was that by now saying anything that indicated even slight disagreement with the notion of pureblood supremacy, or not voicing sufficient agreement with pureblood supremacy, was enough to get the Death Eaters after you, which was losing them some sympathizers and causing some neutrals to shift to the Ministry and the Order.

Even so, it was costly. Which was why the Longbottoms had gone to Dumbledore with the idea that they should put themselves out in the open, where anyone could find them, as bait for a trap.

He had embraced the idea wholeheartedly, and Septimus suspected that he'd wanted to propose such an idea himself but hadn't because he knew how that might look.

Even so, it wasn't a _bad_ idea. It was just very ruthless and very risky. Which was why he'd volunteered for this shift guarding them.

They hadn't been able to set up any anti-apparition charms, unfortunately, but that would have made the Death Eaters realize something was up.

Well, not beyond the house, anyway. If there hadn't been some for the house itself, the Death Eaters would have also suspected that something was up.

It had been nearly a week, and so far the only activity had been a few disreputables hanging about the place. Of course, that didn't mean much. After all, he was fairly sure that his wife's family was mostly Death Eaters, the only exception being young Potter's friend Sirius.

Something moved in a way that it shouldn't, and he looked closer to see what it was. A figure, hooded and cloaked, moved in the shadows of the side street.

"Gideon, Fabian. Be ready," he said. "They are here."

The brothers nodded, and readied themselves quietly. When this started, there would be no time for anything but fighting.

"Two watching the back way," Gideon whispered.

"Three moving down the street," Fabian added.

Septimus felt his lip curl in contempt. Six to kill two, with an infant to protect? Taking these out would be nothing but a boon.

Then, for once, the Death Eaters' ill-discipline worked in their favor. One of the group heading for the front decided not to wait until they got in close to blast down the front door.

At that point, they had to react, and the night was alive with spellwork. He slammed a hex into the man watching the side door, who started yelping as he felt a thousand fleas bite various tender parts of his anatomy. There weren't any, mind, but it sure felt like there were. He knew from personal experience.

He rushed over to help Fabian, who was taking cover against two. "Got one," he said. "Good solid curse right between the eyes."

He wasn't sure what he thought of his son-in-law's enthusiasm, but that was a little hypocritical of him.

"Good work!" He said instead, and started throwing some spells himself. Then he saw one come out from the house, and knew the Longbottoms had joined the fray.

That did it. The odds had just gone from three-to-one in the attackers' favor to five-to-three against, and in less than a second he saw the tell-tale signs of apparition, one of which was that there were no more curses coming their way.

Hopefully now the Death Eaters would be less inclined to do this sort of thing.

* * *

January 21, 1981

It wouldn't be long, Dalton knew, before he had to retire, but he was not going to hand things over to Craig while this war was going on. He intended to see this through to the end, whatever that end was—and he was worried that it might not be good.

There seemed to be a kind of see-saw going. For a few months, there'd be a lot of attacks on normal people. Then they'd stop. Then they'd start again.

At least no one was targeting the boffins. Of course, that might have been because the multinational team was working in Greenland. He wondered for a moment how much they were getting paid.

Even so, the Prime Minister wasn't happy. She wasn't blaming him, yet, but in their last meeting, about six months ago, she'd none too subtly hinted that she wanted the British government to be more actively involved in this war.

Dalton had hinted right back that such was presently not only impossible but undesirable, if they wanted the side friendly to non-wizards to win. While that had silenced her objections, it had not pleased her, because she was not one to stand idly by if she could help it.

Her visit from the new Minister had gone reasonably well, at least. She'd managed to avoid revealing anything, and the two women had actually chatted for a little while, unlike any of the prior conversations which had been essentially terse monologues from the wizards. What was more, it had actually been a conversation of substance, discussing the current war amongst the English wizards, with Thatcher giving her counterpart some advice based on the Troubles. The two had seemed a bit alike—and not just because they were women.

No matter. They were doing all they could do, right now. But they would do more, someday.

* * *

November 10, 1981

It was over. The Dark Lord was dead.

It had been a bad year. The Death Eaters had been feeling dragons breathing down their necks, and had struck hard. The McKinnons had been wiped out in an attack that had also killed Gideon Prewett and badly injured Fabian. Benjy Fenwick and Caradoc Dearborn had died alongside Edgar Bones buying enough time for the latter's wife and children to run. Dorcas Meadowes had been killed by Voldemort personally. They'd taken more than a few Death Eaters with them as they died, but the losses had been more than painful.

Bagnold and Crouch had finally gotten over themselves at that point and ordered the Aurors to use any means necessary to get at the Death Eaters, including the Unforgivable Curses. Nasty business, that was, even though without the giants and werewolves causing trouble they'd been able to concentrate on the wizards—and they'd begun to unofficially coordinate with the Order, finally.

The results had spoken for themselves. Evan Rosier, Walden MacNair, and Irenicus Travers were only the most prominent of the Death Eaters who'd died this past September and October.

Even so, it had felt like they were on a knife-edge.

And then it had happened. Voldemort had gone after the Potters, by himself. He had killed James and Lily, but their son, Harry, had lived.

And Voldemort was...gone.

Vanished.

The Death Eaters were scattering, either hiding, turning themselves in and claiming they'd been Imperiused, or just simply using their money and influence to stay out of Azkaban. There were still some diehards, but the war was effectively over.

And now he waited for Dalton.

He really wasn't sure what he was going to say to the man. How he was going to explain all of this to him without sounding like a complete loon?

But there was Dalton.

Once they finished ordering and had gotten their drinks, Dalton looked at him and asked, "Has something happened?"

"Yes," Septimus replied, and gave him the summary of the situation.

When he finished, the spy shook his head in mingled amazement and disbelief.

"A baby defeated the evil wizard that your entire government hadn't been able to kill? And his followers just surrendered? That...seems rather incredible."

"That is what's happened, though. We'll be busy with trying them all for some time." He paused. "Thank you for all your help."

"They threatened us too," Dalton said flatly. "I noticed you said that he disappeared, not that he died. Aren't you worried that he might reappear?"

"His followers don't seem to be anticipating that he will. They think him gone for good."

"I hope so," Dalton replied. "I don't want to deal with this sort of thing again, any more than you do."

"Yes. About that." Voldemort's demise was not the only thing he'd wanted to speak of. "I grow old, and I have a son. He finds you Muggles utterly fascinating. Might he be able to meet your successor?"

"Yes. Yes, he could."

Excellent. He'd be able to dispose of the envelope addressed to Arthur that read "to be opened only in the event of my death."

He just hoped his son didn't ask Craig something foolish, like what a rubber duck was for. He had the strangest notions, sometimes.

* * *

December 23, 1985

Craig had to admit that Arthur Weasley made him rather uncomfortable. There was a certain guilelessness to the man that made it difficult to regard him as an agent of a potentially hostile power that, while on British soil, was independent in all but name, which made it difficult to maintain the necessary distance.

Of course, part of that was because it was hard to imagine a situation in which Weasley would be hostile. The man was fascinated by all things non-magical, cars and mechanical devices in particular, but he'd asked more questions in the past three years than his father had in nearly three decades. He still wasn't sure if he'd been taking the Mickey when he asked what rubber ducks were for.

And somehow the man had time to have and raise seven children. Craig had no idea how he did it.

He also had no idea why he was working on a Ford Anglia with him. He was an MI5 agent, not a mechanic! Well, all right, it was a bit of a hobby of his, one he'd never told the toffs about, because heaven forbid they be around someone who got his hands dirty.

There was probably a metaphor somewhere in there for his line of work.

"So, Arthur," he asked as he wrestled with particularly recalcitrant lug nut, "what are you planning on doing with this thing, anyway?"

"Well," the wizard replied as he fiddled with the alternator, "I'm hoping to make it fly."

That did not surprise him at all.

"Why?"

"Why not? Also, it's very different, enchanting a broom and enchanting a carpet to fly. Imagine what we could learn from enchanting a car!"

That was another part of the reason. The man reminded him of the best of the boffins he'd met. He wanted to know. He wanted to understand.

And he had to make sure he didn't.

"The really troublesome thing is that the battery, I believe you call it, doesn't work. I cast a repair spell on it yesterday. It turned the car on fine the day before, and it won't now."

He frowned. "Come to think of it...I wonder. Could I see that little torch of yours?"

Craig came out from under the car. "What for?"

"I just need to test something. Won't take a moment."

He handed it over to the wizard, who put it on the table, turned it on, pointed his wand at it, and said, "Reparo!"

It went out immediately. Craig reached for it and turned it off, then back on again.

It didn't light.

"What did you do, man?" He asked as he turned it off, opened it and shook out the batteries, wincing when they hit his palm. The things were hot.

"I don't know," Weasley replied, stammering a bit. "That spell shouldn't have made it not work."

"Lucky thing I keep a spare with me," Craig grumped as he reached into his pocket and put the batteries he kept in there in the torch, then turned it on again. It lit.

"Fascinating," Weasley breathed. "The spell must have drained the electrical...charge, you call it?"

"Yes," Craig replied, numbly. This was a new development.

"I wonder if it happens on contact with any magic," the wizard mused. "Like the spells we use to conceal Diagon Alley and the Ministry...I'll have to test that later. Right now, this car needs work."

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the man's single-mindedness.

* * *

October 19, 1987

Arthur Weasley rubbed his forehead. He'd finally gotten that Ford Anglia aloft, and he knew that he'd still be years away from making it work if it weren't for Craig's help.

He felt a little guilty about that.

Just a little bit, though. He suspected that Craig was under the same orders that he was, although MI5 at least knew what was going on, unlike his own coworkers.

That he did feel guilty about. Keeping the full extent of his interest in Muggle things from them was one thing. Hiding the fact that he was talking with a Muggle about magical things on a regular basis was quite another.

However, this project was one that he couldn't talk about with anyone. He could have with Septimus, but his father had been dead for over a year, now. He also needed to determine who would be his successor.

It would have to be Bill or Charlie. Percy was too high-strung, Fred and George wouldn't take it seriously enough, and Ron and Ginny were too young. And he was not going to keep his successor in the dark, like his father had.

But that could wait a bit. For one thing, the older boys were all at Hogwarts still, and he was not going to tell them about this while they were still in school. For another, he needed to be working on his current project.

Which he returned to viewing with some distaste. He didn't like guns. He didn't much like any weapons, really. Wands could be destructive, yes, but they could be constructive as well. All weapons could do was destroy, and the best you could hope for was that they would destroy things that needed destroying.

But right now he needed to work on his current project, which was about the limits of combining magic and technology. Specifically whether an Extending Charm worked on pistol magazines or not.

He really wasn't sure, one way or the other. There weren't a lot of moving parts, but there were a few. He was especially concerned about the spring.

He sighed, and started loading. There had been a lot of trial and error with this, mostly error. It had taken a few accidents to figure out the muggle concept of calibre, which he had not realized was something that existed or was important until he tried to fire a ".38" round from a "9mm" pistol. The round had gotten thoroughly stuck in the barrel, and getting it out had been a chore.

He smiled ruefully. Attempting " _Accio_ bullet" had resulted in the whole gun flying at him.

He really didn't understand why they used different calibres of bullets for the same sorts of weapons. He understood why they used different weapons—father's stories about what he'd seen the SAS men do provided enough evidence of that. Some weapons fired slowly but very accurately from a great distance, while others fired lots of bullets very quickly, and others, like the one in front of him, were simply easily carryable. So much was understandable.

But putting different sizes of bullet on the same sort of weapon made no sense. Surely he wasn't the only man who'd put the wrong size bullet into his gun? That had to have happened before. So why not have all the guns use the same size bullet?

It all made no sense, like so many things about Muggles. So much to understand and to learn.

He took up the gun in his right hand, pulled the top back and let it go forward, and pointed it carefully at the target. The magazine normally held twelve rounds, but after placing the charm on it he'd loaded fifteen in.

He took up the pistol carefully. He was always worried that his finger would slip and he'd pull the trigger when he didn't want to, so he kept it on the outside of the trigger guard until it was aimed at the target he'd set up.

He'd put several other charms on the gun already. A silencing charm and a cushioning charm after the first time he'd fired it, nearly a decade ago, now—he'd nearly deafened himself, and the thing had nearly flown out of his hand. A weight-reducing one, as well, since it was much easier to hold something light than something heavy. Of course, that had meant working on the cushioning charm, because the recoil got worse.

He fired, slowly, counting each shot.

When he got to twelve, he took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

BANG!

He squeezed again.

BANG!

And again.

BANG!

The gun stayed open this time, and he looked and saw that it was empty.

He grinned, then sobered. Magic and muggle technology could work together. Could enhance each other. The purebloods wouldn't like that much-and neither would Craig. A suspicious man, he was.

He sighed. He hated not being able to tell people about the things he'd discovered.

* * *

September 3, 1987

"So do these actually work?" Craig asked skeptically. The...device in front of him was essentially a pair of ludicrously oversized binoculars hooked up to a rather large battery. Supposedly, it would allow the user to see through magical illusions.

Supposedly.

"Well..." the boffin in front in front of him temporized, and Craig sighed. Dr. Percival Smythe-Fallows was undeniably brilliant, but he did have a tendency to go off a little half-cocked. The first time he'd done it had nearly resulted in the loss of one of Her Majesty's laboratories, and only the fact that he had been the one to prevent it had stopped his sacking.

It had resulted in him being assigned to the Magical Studies division, where he wouldn't be able to do much harm but might still be useful. And now he might possibly have come up with something useful. Unfortunately, it was a little hard to really test it in the lab, since no one in the government could do magic.

Well, he knew where he could find a magical illusion, anyway. Rope had made sure to record where he'd seen Septimus Weasley come out from where there was no door. Now he needed to go see about acquiring some rooms in the middle of London. The only good thing was that he didn't need to cover his financial tracks.

Two weeks later, it was the moment of truth. He was set up in one of the flats across from Diagon Alley, rented by one of the new meat. Getting everything in hadn't been difficult-while it wasn't the most mobile device, everything fit into a couple of large suitcases.

Setting everything up hadn't been especially difficult, either, as whatever his faults Smythe-Fallows understood the need to keep things as simple as possible. All he'd had to do was remember to pull the curtains-and to set up the camera rig that was transmitting back to the lab. If he was found out, they would need to know if this worked.

Of course, they had taken some elementary precautions, like making sure he wasn't backlit, but this had a lot of potential to go wrong.

He turned on the device, gave it some time to warm up, raised the binoculars up to his eyes, and pulled back the curtain.

He cursed in wonder. There was an entire building there, and a wide one at that.

He let the curtain fall, lowered the binoculars carefully to the table, looked towards the camera, and nodded before he started to think about what this meant.

Little enough for now, really. He was fairly certain that no one who wasn't a wizard would be able to get into that building anytime soon. But, even so, if MI5 could detect where the wizards were and where they weren't, it would go a long way towards getting the relationship between wizard and non-wizard where it needed to be, for the sake of the Realm.

Britain could not afford to harbor people with the capacity to destroy her with impunity. Better to solve it this way than others.

**A/N: For those who might object to Dalton thinking that the Germans mostly fought with honor and decency, bear in mind, this is set in 1979. The war crimes committed on the Eastern Front are even less well-known in the West at this period in history than they are today. Also, when fighting the Western Allies the Germans usually played fair, though the SS less so than the Wehrmacht. Malmedy was the exception, not the rule.**


	8. Chapter 8

August 10, 1991

Craig appeared somewhat impatient as he asked, "Why is it important that this Harry Potter fellow is attending Hogwarts?"

Arthur had to admit that it wasn't a bad question. "Because he was the only survivor of the attack the night...Voldemort..." it took some effort to get himself to say the name, because it was bad luck to do it, but it felt rather silly calling him "you-know-who" in front of a Muggle, "vanished. We call him "the boy-who-lived. Bit famous, really, despite not having lived among us since."

"Which still doesn't tell me why it matters to me that he's going to Hogwarts this year."

"Because he's been kept safe by the fact that only three people knew where he was. There are still some Death Eaters out there." Far more than there should have been. Those trials were a joke, with blatant bribery going on all over the place.

"So you want us to keep an eye on his family?"

"Yes."

"I'll see if I can arrange it," Craig replied. "Who are they and where do they live?"

Arthur pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Craig. "Vernon and Petunia Dursley, 106 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey."

Craig nodded. "I'll see what I can do. Though you still haven't explained to me why it's important that we protect him. I would like some kind of explanation for why I want to use government assets to guard someone who, aside from having the ability to use magic, is a perfectly ordinary ten-year-old boy."

Weasley shook his head. "I really don't know anything more than I've told you." Though Dumbledore definitely knew more than he was telling. The man liked being the only one "in the know" a little bit too much for Arthur's liking.

At least he'd told the boys to watch over young Potter and try and keep him from doing something foolish. Though Fred and George had very different definitions of foolish than most people.

Craig shrugged. "That'll make my end a little more difficult, but it's still doable. We'll probably use it as a training assignment."

That was not altogether encouraging, but he suspected that without more information that was all Craig was willing to ask for.

"Is there anything else I should know?"

The conversation then turned to the usual discussion

* * *

.

September 19, 1990

"I wouldn't have placed a dog I didn't like with these people," Craig muttered as he watched the Dursleys leave their house.

Vernon was...portly, if one wished to be kind while describing him, which Craig really rather didn't, which on a better man might have made him more approachable. However, the new man, and his likely successor, Timothy Brosnan, had gone to several pubs in the city that Dursley's coworkers frequented, and made some inquiries.

The man was utterly detested by all of his coworkers, and his wife and son were as well.

Looking at the two, he wasn't surprised. Petunia looked like she was going to be a harridan in her old age, and was a shrew already. Dudley was well on his way to becoming a younger version of Vernon, was going to one of the worst public schools in England, and apparently thriving there. He could not imagine why these wizards would have stuck young Potter with these people.

Just then, the car phone rang.

"Craig."

"Good. We need you back at headquarters. The research team has had another breakthrough."

"On my way," he replied, though he hadn't a clue what could be so important that they needed to call him in from the field.

It had better be something good.

It was.

"So now I don't need to carry a suitcase around to use the deglamourizers? That's good," he said as he held the device, which looked like an exceptionally bulky pair of binoculars, carefully in his hand.

"Yes, the Americans were quite helpful..." the boffin went on about miniaturizing components and semiconductors while Craig considered how he was going to use these.

They'd already spent the past several years carefully surveilling England, looking for anything that they couldn't see normally. They'd found a few places, here and there, but almost always in large cities. At least they knew where the wizards had their Ministry of Magic now, if they needed to take…measures.

Now they could go out into the countryside and start looking about without being ridiculously conspicuous. Things were looking up.

* * *

June 30, 1991

Arthur took a pull from the pint of beer that he'd ordered. Storytelling was thirsty work, and the recent events at Hogwarts were the sort that one tended to get caught up in retelling. As a result, he was parched, so it was a rather long one.

Which meant that he was rather surprised when he put the pint down and saw Craig looking inscrutably at him while his probable successor, who answered to the name of Brosnan, was failing to conceal a glower.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

The two Muggles looked at each other, and Craig made a "go ahead" gesture to the younger.

"So let me be sure that I understand this right," Brosnan said. "The person who was supposed to teach your young wizards how to defend themselves against dark magic turned out to be possessed by Voldemort."

"Yes."

"Do you people not have spells that can check for that kind of thing?"

"We don't."

"Whyever not?"

It was a rather good question.

"And, apparently, his plot was foiled by your son and two of his friends, neither of whom is out of puberty."

"Yes." Ron was a good lad.

"Who, while foiling said plot, got through a series of traps that your supposed best and brightest set up."

"Err...yes."

"What is wrong with you people?"

* * *

June 30, 1992

"So let me make sure I understand you correctly. The person who was supposed to teach your young wizards how to defend themselves against dark magic turned out to be a fraud who erased people's memories and claimed their accomplishments as his own?" Brosnan asked as Craig looked on.

"Yes."

"And there was a snake that kills people by looking them in the eye roaming around the school, that turned people to stone instead based on pure luck, and no one thought to evacuate your children?"

"Errrrr...yes."

"And, once again, it fell to your son and his friends, who are still not out of puberty, to save the school via going down into a cavern underneath the school and killing the snake themselves?"

"Errrrr...yes."

"What is wrong with you people?"

* * *

June 30, 1993

"So let me see if I understand this correctly. A mass murderer escaped from an inescapable prison, which is the only one you have. The ministry then assigned the guards of said prison, who eat souls, to guard schoolchildren. Your son and his friends then proceeded to foil his plot, though he escaped. In the meantime, it turned out that the first competent defense against the dark arts teacher you've had in years is getting the sack because he's a werewolf, despite the fact that he's not actually dangerous.

Does that sum it up?"

"Errrr...yes."

"What is wrong with you people?"

Arthur was beginning to wonder himself.

* * *

June 30, 1994

Arthur had read, once, in a Muggle book, about a man who seemed mad enough to chew nails, and wondered what that would look like. He wasn't wondering any more, because Brosnan, who had now taken Craig's place, looked exactly as he imagined a man in such a state would look.

"So let me make sure I understand this correctly. You people decided to reinstitute a competition that, on more than occasion, ended without a winner because all the participants died. Said participants being TEENAGERS."

"Well…yes." When you put it that way it really did seem like a Very Bad Idea.

"In some kind of effort to not make it insane, you then instituted a minimum age to join. Then, when the magical cup you used to determine who would compete spit out the name of an underage student, who is your son's best friend and arguably the one responsible for all the school-saving the past three years, the organizers just went with it, even though each school already had a champion."

"Errr...yes."

"Over the course of the school year, one of your high officials goes missing, and then it turns out that his son, who was a Death Eater, who escaped your increasingly escapable inescapable prison and had spent the school year masquerading as one of your best operatives who had taken the job of teaching young wizards how to defend themselves. And you found all this out after the end of the final part of the tournament, when your son's friend Potter comes back with the corpse of the other Hogwarts student, saying Voldemort was back. And now your government is trying to cover it all up."

"Errrrr...yes."

"What is WRONG with you people?"

* * *

June 30, 1995

"You look terrible," Brosnan said, with evident sympathy.

Arthur nodded bleakly. It had not been a good few days, and he had a pretty good idea how the Muggle would react to the take he was about to tell.

Poorly.

But he told it anyway.

When he was done, Brosnan didn't say anything for a few moments.

"Are your children and their friends all right?" he asked, surprisingly gently.

"Yes. They got some scrapes and bruises, but Sirius" he faltered—to have judged so wrongly for so long, the months hadn't been enough to make up for it—"was the only man we lost."

"My condolences," Brosnan replied. He leaned forward. "Still, I have to ask—what the devil are you people playing at? If I were to write a story with this Umbridge woman as a villain, it would be junked for being unrealistic. Did no one see anything wrong at all with making her title 'High Inquisitor'?"

Arthur winced. "Most of our people know little of Muggle history. And the Inquisition—well, the Inquisition demanded things like "evidence" before they set to the burning."

"Fair. Even so. And is it just me, or does it seem like you people seem determined to throw the weight of the world on Mr Potter and his friends, your children included?"

Arthur shook his head vehemently. "If he'd told us what he was going to do we'd've gone ourselves. I certainly never would have told my children to go and do something like that." He smiled then. "Though I'm proud that they did. Guess me 'n Molly must've done something right."

He did wonder how they'd gone wrong with Percy.

"That it took a direct attack on the Ministry, after that mass breakout from your inescapable prison, to get your man Fudge to realize the truth, though—" Brosnan sighed. "Ah, that's not so different. Never seen a politician who wouldn't deny unpleasant reality given a sliver of a chance to."

Arthur nodded.

"So what are you going to do now?"

He sighed. That was the question he and the others had been asking ever since the attack.

"I don't know," he replied. "Try and sniff out Death Eaters wherever we can. And try and kill him."

There was no need to explain who he was.

Brosnan nodded. "Let us know what we can do. Voldemort threatens us all."

"My father told me about what you did for us in the last war. We will."

* * *

September 27, 1995

The Prime Minister was not happy, and Brosnan didn't blame him. He'd at least known that the Brockdale Bridge collapse was the result of magic, but finding out that the massive storm that had just hit the West Country was magically caused had been a nasty surprise for everyone.

The PM, of course, had demanded some kind of action. Brosnan had pointed out that, while by now at least NATO knew where almost all the major magical sites were-something the Germans, Norwegians, and Danes had especially wanted, since Durmstrang considered their lands part of its sphere.

He'd heard that Poland and the Czechs wanted in too. He wondered, for a moment, if the KGB and SBMSW had managed what MI5 had. The Stasi had pulled it off, but when nearly a third of the population were informing for you it was little wonder.

Their venture, however, had ended rather violently. The files on wizards that had been retrieved after the fall of the Wall were scanty, but cross-indexing the dates on the files with recorded agent deaths indicated that there'd been a fight, and the Stasi had come off second-best.

Brosnan had no problem with that. Nasty bunch. Even so, he did feel some sympathy for those two dozen men who'd gone up against an enemy that could command the elements themselves.

He smiled at himself. Vesper was rubbing off on him. He was waxing poetic now.

Still, the basic problem was that, while they'd found the wizards' ministry, their school, and several of their villages, identifying individual wizards was quite a trick. He'd at least managed to get a third man assigned to the group, and had placed him at the flat overlooking Diagon Alley to take pictures of anyone who came out of it.

So far, he had about five hundred or so, several of which they had managed to link to various children who'd suddenly gone off to some school no one had ever heard of around the time they turned eleven—and that had taken years of work and sorting to find out.

That was also something they were starting to keep watch on—students who were going to some school no one had ever heard of. Or students who were supposedly going to a school where no one had seen them darken the door.

Of course, most of the time they were false positives, but there were enough that weren't to make it worthwhile.

Potter they'd known about, but they'd found several others, including two brothers named Creevey and a girl named Granger.

They were going to be keeping a very close watch on school rolls, yes they were.

At least the Prime Minister had been willing to assign an SAS team to the Magic Section, with one of Major Frobisher's men in command, a fellow named Arnold Williams, also now a major. They'd managed to wrangle the others-the ones who were still alive, anyway-out of retirement with some very nice contracts.

They were having a very long discussion with the new guys about what they knew about magic.

Which wasn't nearly as much as Brosnan would have liked, but more than he knew Weasley wanted any Muggles to know.

He sighed. The intelligence they had was just so...spotty. The discussion he'd had with Weasley about the Triwizard tournament had revealed more about how wizarding governments interacted with each other in an hour than they'd picked up in the decade before that.

And, since they'd worked out that magic was at least affected by certain electromagnetic frequencies, they'd set to Faraday caging everywhere important. He wasn't sure if it would work, but it would be better than nothing.

Of course, the new lads were having a hard time really comprehending it, but they'd come around once he showed them Diagon Alley.

Well, and the recordings of all the times the Minister of Magic had introduced himself to the new Prime Minister, or introduced his successor to the then-current PM.

And then show them the recordings of the giants and the werewolves and what they'd left behind when they attacked. That should give the commandos proper motivation if nothing else did.

He paused. Could they set some of the deglamourizers up around the Ministry? It might take a little time to get everything set up, but it could be useful, especially if this Voldemort fellow staged a coup. If nothing else, being able to see what was going on would give them some warning.

Of course, there was the question of what they would do, exactly, if Voldemort took over and decided to go on a rampage. He was fairly sure that he and his fellow Muggles would win. But the cost would be horrendous.

The analysts thought that the casualties would range from the tens of thousands in the best case to millions in the worst case. He was not going to let that happen.

* * *

October 30, 1996

Arthur was growing worried. Given that all the hands on the family clock were pointed at "mortal peril" he'd be a fool if he wasn't.

But this went beyond that. He was worried about everything. Ever since he'd joined the Order he'd kept his ear to the ground more than he ever had, and he didn't like what he was hearing.

Greyback had returned, for one thing. He had few followers, at any rate, but it was still troubling. The giants, at least, had chosen to stay out of this one-all of the ones who had come in the first year had fallen, and the few left, according to Hagrid, thought Britain was where giants went if they wanted to die.

They had beaten the Death Eater emissary to a pulp, and told Hagrid that come war, the giants would be marching with no one.

That was, in some ways, preferable to having them join up. Giving giants something to do was an absolute necessity. And he wasn't sure what they could have found them to do.

Even so, he knew that the call had gone out everywhere, to help cleanse Britain of mudbloods and blood traitors. And there were rumors that it might not just be Durmstrangers who answered this time. The Americans had far fewer supremacists than separatists, but the ones they had were...intense. The Africans and Asians mostly looked inward. The Beauxbatons countries had their own issues, but also resented Durmstrang. And Castelobruxo-they were a wild card.

Yes, it was unlikely that anyone would answer a call for help with anything other than "sorry. We're busy." But to not even make the effort, when everyone knew the Death Eaters were doing the same...the only foreigner who might help them was Fleur Delacour.

He smiled. Who would have thought that of the flighty French girl? Admittedly, it seemed like she was mostly doing it because of Bill-he smiled again-but he'd take what help he could get.

He paused. Might she know some people who'd be willing? It was worth a shot.

He didn't know why Dumbledore had been unwilling to do it. Maybe he just hadn't thought of it. It didn't matter either way. He was going to.

Of course, Molly would probably be quite cross with him if she found out. Best to do it quietly, then.

He grinned. He doubted that anyone would be quite good enough for their boys, in her eyes. He was somewhat less fussy.

* * *

November 19, 1996

More and more, Brosnan was coming to the conclusion that the day when Muggles could hold wizards to account had been put off far too long.

Arthur had mentioned some man named Riddle, and that had set off a memory of something he'd seen in the paper, Something about a murder suspect found dead at the house of the person he'd supposedly killed a few decades ago.

He'd sent one of the lads out to look for the article, and he'd come back a few days later, not only with the article in question, but also articles discussing the initial crime and the trial.

Frank Boyce had been born in 1917, his father having lost his leg at Loos. He went off to war in '39, taking a bad leg injury at Alam el Halfa in '42 with the Desert Rats. When he returned, he became the caretaker and gardener for the Riddle family, until one day, not even a year after, they were all found dead.

There had been no sign of forced entry, and the family's bodies hadn't had a scratch on them. Suspicion had naturally fallen on Bryce, who had claimed to have seen a teenage boy going up the hill to the Riddle house on the night of the murders. No one else had, but Bryce had been found not guilty due to lack of evidence.

And then, just a year ago, he'd been found dead in the house.

He knew what had happened. That boy Bryce had seen had been some kind of wizard. He'd killed the Riddles with magic, then left Bryce to take the fall. And something told him that despite the examiner's report, the old man hadn't died of natural causes.

The case was everything bad about how those with magic dealt with those without, and it left him seething. He really couldn't wait until the boffins managed to shrink the deglamourizers to the size of night vision goggles. He'd also heard that they were trying to figure out if they could detect if magic had been used in a particular area. He hoped they could.

He took a deep breath. There were always the ones like Arthur, and those who were, apparently, fighting the Death Eaters. They were the reason he didn't think extermination was the best course.

Besides, that would also be catastrophic for Britain. Something told him that the other wizards might not take an attempted extermination well, and a magical world war struck him as a very bad idea.

He smiled. When something was immoral and impractical, it was always best to not do it. Of course, one had best not mention it to a politician. Their definition of practicality tended to be whatever they thought would get them elected. Winning wars did that, and politicians always overestimated the chances of winning when they were in charge

He tapped his pen on the table. The SAS were working on a plan to provide assistance to Hogwarts if Voldemort attacked it.

The boffins were still working on reducing the deglamourizers so they and their power source could fit on a helmet, however, and he didn't want them going in blind. They certainly didn't want to go in that way.

He hoped the boffins developed it soon.

* * *

November 29, 1996

Arthur felt Molly put her hand on his shoulder and leaned back in his workbench chair. "Come to bed," she said, quietly. "You need your rest."

"I know," he replied. "It's just that…"

"Don't you 'just that' me, Arthur Weasley. You know you don't think well when you're tired." Her voice softened. "What's baffling you?"

"Everything." Molly knew about the family secret, as did Bill and Charlie. He was very glad he hadn't told Percy yet. "I think the Muggles have figured out how to see through the illusions we put up to keep things out of their sight."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not, but a few things Mr Craig's said lead me to believe so. He certainly seems to think that his men might be of service. Which they would be, but you know as well as I that bringing in Muggles right now is the worst thing we could do short of all giving up and becoming Death Eaters ourselves."

He could feel Molly's wince at the thought. From what he'd seen, the Muggles both had and hadn't moved far past the bad old days. As long as men like Craig were the ones who knew about magic, that was fine. It was manageable.

But their politicians—he shuddered. Some of them made Fudge look reasonable, and others made Scrimgeour look like Dumbledore. And, frankly, the things he read in their newspapers and magazines didn't cause him to be much impressed with the average Muggle either.

Even so, he suspected Craig, and the other MI5 men, were somewhat sympathetic on the topic. He suspected, however, that if it came down to it they would burn down the wizarding world in order to preserve the Muggle one.

He hoped it didn't come to that, because at that point he would have to decide if he could burn down the Muggle world in order to save the wizarding one. Frankly, he was terrified of what decision he might make. It would be best to keep things from getting to the point where he'd have to make that choice.

Unfortunately, the Order couldn't be everywhere at once, and while Scrimgeour wasn't trying to cover things up the way Fudge had been, he wasn't much of an improvement. Suspicion of being a Death Eater was all it took to land you in Azkaban these days.

The worst part was that he was pretty sure that actual Death Eaters were reporting people on suspicion of being Death Eaters. Shacklebolt and the Aurors were discounting any report that came from someone who'd been a Death Eater in the last war, but Scrimgeour wanted numbers, and he was issuing orders to arrest people. Kingsley could throw up bureaucratic obstacles like no one else when he took the notion, but there was only so much he could do.

He took a moment to curse Fudge silently.

"Cursing Fudge for a fool won't do much good, you know," Molly said. "I should know, I've done it enough."

Arthur snorted laughter. "All right. I'll come to bed."

As they went up the rickety stairs, Molly looked over at him. "Did you ever think we'd be doing this again?"

"No. Especially not alongside our children." He shook his head wearily. "Why must they be the ones to pay for our mistakes?"

"Not our mistakes, Arthur," his wife said sadly. "The mistakes of others. That's the worst of it."


	9. Chapter 9

January 21, 1997

Brosnan sighed as he leaned wearily back in his chair. Not only was Voldemort back, but the werewolves were back. Just to make everything better.

It was exactly how it had been the last time, at least as the files indicated and Craig had told him. A large family, living out on the moors, all slaughtered as if by wild animals, except for two missing children. Greyback must still be trying to build up his numbers.

At least now the SAS could start doing more than reconnaissance, since the wizards apparently didn't care what happened to werewolves. Even so, finding the werewolves was a gamble-you found a likely target, you got ready to defend it, and you hoped the creatures would attack it and not one of the other ones. The only reason it was even somewhat manageable was because Greyback was utterly predictable. He always attacked the same sorts of places.

There were no orphanages left in Britain, though. That made things more difficult, since those would have been at the top of the list had they existed.

Also, the weather was still dreadfully cold and wet. Depression and suicide rates were the highest they'd been in decades. Construction site accidents were up too, as were unexplained deaths. And, of course, everyone was blaming the PM, which meant he was leaning on his subordinates to produce some kind of good news.

Especially on him, since the PM knew, thanks to the new Minister of Magic, that most of this was because Voldemort was back.

Which was why he had whiskey in his hand. His last interview had been...unpleasant. The PM had been doing his best not to shoot the messenger, but his lack of understanding of magic was both help and hindrance. Help, because he didn't think he understood what was going on, and so didn't try to tell him how to do his job. Hindrance, because he kept needing things explained to him, and there were times when he wondered if the man was really listening when he explained.

Also, his bosses didn't seem to want much to do with him. He had deep and dark suspicions that MI5 would prefer to forget that magic even existed, and while that made getting resources an issue, it did mean that they didn't stick their noses where they didn't belong. Yet another mixed blessing.

He looked at the whiskey glass again. It was empty. He looked over at Williams, who, since they were both off-duty, had joined him in drowning his sorrows.

"Did you think you'd ever be doing this again?"

The commando laughed. "No. None of the other lads could believe it either." He paused. "I always had the feeling that there was unfinished business, though. Had it a few times in the Troubles, before we came here. Always when we nailed some bombmaker and then command wouldn't give us the go-ahead to find out who his boss was and kill him. Had the same feeling back in the Gulf in '92—we'll be back there in a few years, mark me. But I think we all knew that someone after us would be fighting these people again. I'd just hoped that we'd finished the werewolves. But maybe...maybe this time we finish things."

Brosnan looked at Williams' glass. It was still full.

He filled his and raised it high.

"To finishing things."

"I'll drink to that."

* * *

March 15, 1997

Arthur was more than a little worried. First, Ron had been dosed with a love potion by Romilda Vane, of all people. His son thought it had been meant for Harry, and he'd recovered by now, but it was still worrisome. Love potions could have...tricky side effects. Second, Ron had, that same night, been poisoned by some mead that had been originally meant for Dumbledore—which Harry, good lad, had fixed with a bezoar.

Still, it was rather unpleasant when your son was injured twice, even if, or especially if, it was on accident. At least it didn't call Ron's good sense into question like his choice of girlfriends. Lavender Brown, of all people? All right, she wasn't a bad girl, but she was a lot like her mother—a bit of a fluffhead.

Bill's judgment, however, despite Molly's issues with his choice of women, he still considered good. Yes, Fleur was a little frightened—which demonstrated that she had a brain in her head, despite her occasional absent-mindedness. An absent-mindedness, he noticed, that went away whenever she wasn't around Bill.

Despite being a little scared, she'd shown no signs of balking. He respected that, and it boded well for the future, especially considering that Bill, like Charlie, was a bit of a what Brosnan called an "adrenaline junkie."

It was good that something boded well, because in the wider world things were only getting more tense. There was something wrong with Dumbledore, and he wasn't sure what. Brosnan was trying to convince him to get more help for werewolf hunting—and he was beginning to suspect that the Muggles had developed some kind of way to see through magical illusions, based on a few things Brosnan had let slip.

He wondered, for a moment, if the Muggles in France or America had found out about magic; and, if so, if they'd found out the same way the ones in England had. And then he wondered, if they had found out about magic, if the Muggles in those countries had been more communicative with each other than his people had been.

Then he thought about something either Craig or Brosnan had mentioned. Something called NATO, which seemed to be a kind of partnership among the Muggle countries, of a sort unknown among wizards.

That meant they probably had told each other.

Arthur cursed, then. That meant that the chances of the Muggles finding out some way to detect or defeat magic was much higher than he'd thought.

On the other hand…

On the other hand, if things went as badly as they might with this war, that might not be a bad thing.

* * *

March 31, 1997

Brosnan didn't bother with any kind of ceremony, since the emergency session of the NATO Magic Council didn't really need to come to order, as there were only five people in the room. Louis Villiers, Joachim Ritter, Olaf Trond, himself, and the first woman on the committee, Carolyn Lincoln.

Lincoln spoke first. "My superiors have authorized me to provide aid from within our agency. I can promise nothing outside of that."

That was more than it sounded like. MI5 envied the FBI's funding and manpower. Even so...

"We could use the help, but not for going on the attack. The wizards are nervous enough about us getting involved as it is."

"Security, then."

"Yes." He leaned forward. "Also, what are the American wizards doing?"

"Bickering, mostly. They will not be helping this...Voldemort...but they will not be helping his opponents either."

That was better news than he expected to get out of the Germans and Norwegians, though he had hopes for the French. Speaking of...

He looked over at Villiers.

"I must report the same," he said with a sigh. "Also, from my country and those to our south, there may be some volunteers for those opposing Voldemort, but they will be few, if there are any."

Well, there went that hope.

Ritter and Trond gave nearly identical answers. Their governments were worried about what the wizards in their countries might do, so they could provide no aid beyond intelligence, and likely little of that. Any volunteers would be going to Voldemort.

Lincoln spoke then. "I have been authorized to speak for the Japanese. There will be no involvement from them in any capacity." She grimaced. "I think they don't care what us gaijin get up to as long as it doesn't affect them."

That was probably true. Getting Britain to care about what was going on on the Continent was difficult enough.

He leaned forward as Ritter spoke. "There are other matters that should concern us all. It may be that there is more to the wars in Yugoslavia than we know."

That was...alarming. "What do you mean?"

"We believe that more extreme Durmstranger wizards is trying to keep the wars going, most likely to keep us and our governments focused away from what is happening in Britain."

That made sense. Unfortunately.

The others nodded. "It's been hard to get the President's attention," Lincoln admitted. "And the MACUSA is busy trying to keep some of its people from joining Voldemort."

"A few of the wizards from Beauxbatons are going there," the Frenchman offered, "but we don't know if they're going to be willing to fight."

Ritter shrugged. "Who can say? I do know that many of our wizards are rather upset by the whole mess. Of course, some of them are upset only because their fellows are getting involved in our affairs. Even wizards who don't like us don't like it when other wizards meddle."

That wasn't surprising. Part of the reason the MACUSA was so strong compared to the other wizarding nations was because it had decided, in its early days, that Ilvermorney would take in anyone who was refused entry into another school because of their blood.

Nearly all of those students had come from Durmstrang's area, and the fact that they hadn't made the Americans any weaker really rankled the idiots.

The resultant Slavic and Native American influence had had some interesting effects, apparently. Some for the better, some for the worse. For one thing, American wizards had a thing for little fur hats. It was rather odd.

At any rate, that annoyance, for some reason, only accentuated the Durmstrangers' determination to not interact with non-wizards except from a position of dominance.

But that was going to be a problem for the future to solve. Right now, he had more pressing concerns. "In other words, all of you are telling me that Wizard Hitler is going to be getting very little help from the outside, and his opponents will be getting almost no help. Is that about it?"

"Yes," Ritter replied bluntly. "Also, our operatives who are read in on magic will be in the Balkans."

"So Britain stands alone. Again." Brosnan sighed bitterly. He wondered for a moment what the other countries would do if Voldemort took over Wizarding Britain and then started in on normal Britain. Hopefully they'd be quicker off the mark than they had been in Bosnia.

If they weren't, his country would die. And he knew the code name for what to do if that happened.

Malleus Maleficarum.

* * *

April 19, 1997

Arthur Weasley was getting worried. Some of it was because of interesting news on the home front—Ginny was dating Harry now, and while he didn't have anything against Dean he thought Potter the better choice. It was a bit frustrating, though, because he'd so wanted to give someone the Fatherly Talk and he couldn't do that with Harry. Also worrying, because he knew Ginny was unlikely to give into seduction—but Harry was the sort of lad who could seduce women by not trying to do it, and he did tend to get into scrapes and take his friends along with him.

That, however, was the sort of thing it was almost nice to be worried about, because it was normal. There was definitely something very wrong with Dumbledore. He had gone to great lengths to cover up one of his hands the last time he'd come on to talk about his discussions with Brosnan and his research into combining magic and Muggle technology. Added to the fact that Dumbledore seemed almost fragile, as well, something he'd never seen any evidence of before, it spelled trouble.

He hoped the man was all right. Losing him now would be...disastrous. He'd led the war against Grindelwald, the first war with Voldemort, and was leading now in the second. There was no one who could lead the Order like he could.

McGonagall and Shacklebolt, his likely successors, would be excellent—no doubt of that—but still. Dumbledore was something of a talisman to those among Britain's wizards who stood against the Dark. As long as he lived, the Dark could not triumph. When he no longer did, then the possibility opened up.

He was broken from his moodiness by the sound of the front door to 12 Grimmauld Place opening.

"Hullo the house," Remus called.

"In here," Arthur replied. "I just put the tea on."

He looked at him and winced. Remus looked horrible, and Arthur didn't blame him. He'd been tracking Greyback and his wolfpack for months, and it was taking a heavy toll. There was also the matter of Tonks.

He wasn't going to bring that up, however.

"Or do you need something stronger?"

Remus looked at him flatly. "No," he replied. "What I need is for you to tell me who your contact with the Muggles is and how to reach him."

"Remus, what—"

"Confound it Arthur!" Remus said in an outburst that was shocking coming from him before he dropped his voice again. "I've been hiding my secret for years, which means I know what it looks like when someone else it. I knew your father was hiding something, I knew you were too, and your two oldest sons as well. And since I knew that, it wasn't hard to figure it out. Dumbledore knows, I suppose."

"He does," Arthur replied. "Remus, what..."

"I can't stop him, Arthur. But I know as well as you do that it wasn't us who put Greyback out of the war the first time. And I can track him." He leaned forward. "Help me help the Muggles. I grow weary of finding butchered families."

Arthur nodded. He should have done this a long time ago. "Yes. Let's."

* * *

April 22, 1997

Brosnan was a bit nervous about this whole thing. More than a bit, actually.

Arthur had contacted him two days ago, and then showed up at the nearly deserted restaurant they'd agreed to meet at with another fellow. He was only the second wizard he'd met, and he was rather different from Arthur. Quieter, somber. But very keen. Very keen indeed.

He'd introduced himself as Remus Lupin, and, once the waiter had taken their orders and left them alone, had begun by saying, "I am a werewolf, and I want to help you hunt down Greyback."

That had been unexpected. "Why?"

"Greyback made me a werewolf out of revenge. He's made dozens of children werewolves, and killed hundreds more. But you know that already. And he's back, you've been hunting him, and he's hard to find. Not like he was back in the first war."

That was true. Greyback was being a lot more careful. No more spending days around the target scouting and killing animals, either because they might raise an alarm or for the sheer joy of it. Now there was no warning whatsoever.

"How can you help?"

"I can track them. I've been trying to convince the few remaining neutrals of my kind to join our side. It hasn't been very successful. But I know where Greyback lairs, and I've gotten to be very good at following him. If you have something you can use to track me, I can point you to Greyback and his friends."

He'd practically fallen over himself saying yes.

Which was why he was in a helicopter over the Norfolk countryside, along with half a dozen SAS men. The rest of the team was in a second helicopter, and they were loaded for bear, as the Americans would say it.

The tracker was one used by the national parks to monitor animal movements, modified to send a continuous signal when activated. Unfortunately, the receiving apparatus was too heavy to take on a helicopter. As a result, they had a tracker of their own on board the helicopter, which the men on the receiver, including his second, a fellow named Daniel Lazenby, were also monitoring in order to keep them informed of their relative positions.

And they were almost on them. The moors around here were clear. Greyback and his pack would have nowhere to hide. The only question was if Lupin was as good as he said he was. He suspected so, but there was a lot riding on this.

"You're right there!" Lazenby said over the radio. The pilots moved quickly, and he felt his stomach move into his throat as the helicopter dropped.

"I have ten bogies on infrared," the pilot said. "Nine in a group, one a hundred yards behind."

"That's them," Brosnan gasped. "Remember, the loner is a friendly."

Williams grinned wolfishly. "Take us in."

"Yes, sir!"

The operative held on for dear life as the helicopters banked hard around to drop the commandoes in position-and to provide a bit of fire support from the .50 door guns they'd been fitted with for this operation.

"Night vision off" Williams ordered, and the men who weren't flying the helicopters did as they were told.

As they came closer to the ground, Brosnan found himself wondering if the plan would work. Hopefully the werewolves wouldn't break and run, but a berserker charge would cause some problems as well…

His thoughts cut off as the helicopters slammed to a halt, and the commandos were out in a trice. At which point the major ordered "light 'em up!" And the pilots switched on the mounted searchlights, revealing nine werewolves.

Who apparently had not been expecting this, because they did what any animal did when sudden light fell upon it.

They froze for a moment before they turned to run, but against soldiers like the SAS a moment was far more than they could afford to take.

The machine guns tore into the main cluster, while the soldiers' rifles did for the rest of the pack and there was Greyback running away and he'd start this again later...

Another werewolf came out of the dark and tore into the fleeing creature. It did not take its time. It did not linger.

It simply killed him, howled at the moon, then bounded away.

He then realized that none of the soldiers had fired at Lupin, and shook his head in wonder. That was extraordinary discipline on their part.

They then went out to tally up the dead, once they were sure that there was nothing alive and moving out on the moor.

Nine.

One of them, based on the description Weasley had given, was Greyback.

It had been a good day.

He was a little disappointed when they found Lupin's tracker three kicks away, without Lupin. It would have been nice to know where he'd gone. He hadn't really expected that the man would let them know where his fellow wizards were, though.

* * *

April 25, 1997

Remus somehow looked both better and worse, Arthur thought as he watched the man wrap himself around one of Molly's sandwiches and a cup of tea. He looked like a man who'd been relieved of a terrible burden, only to have another one placed upon him.

He'd staggered in late the night before utterly bedraggled and not really understandable.

Now that he'd had a good night's sleep and some food, however...

"It was like nothing I'd ever seen, Arthur. They came out of the sky, in...I don't know what to call them, or compare them to."

"Muggles call them helicopters. Big, boxy things with what look like propellors on top of them."

"Yes. Those. And when they turned on the lights it was almost like they turned night to day, right where Greyback and his pack were standing. I couldn't have placed it quite that well. And then...I don't know what they did, but they had wands that spat fire...guns, that's what they're called?"

"Yes."

"They tore them apart. Limbs torn from bodies, bodies cut in half...it was impressive, but horrifying." He paused. "Greyback ran. I saw him. He was at the center of his pack, towards the back. And he abandoned the pack he'd made."

He hung his head. "The wolf took over, then. To see such a betrayal, even of them—it was too much. So I attacked him as he fled. And I killed him. With tooth and claw. I tore his throat out."

He looked up, eyes haunted. "How am I any different from..."

"Remus Lupin!" Molly said sharply. "I'll have none of that kind of talk from you. You couldn't be Fenrir Greyback if you tried to be. I've seen you with the children. You'd die before you touched a hair on their heads."

She sat down at the table and glared at him. "What you did was nothing more than what I would have done if somebody tried to kill one of my children. And yes, I know he wasn't doing that at the time. But you knew good and well that he would go after some more children if he escaped, didn't you?"

"Well, yes..."

"Then it's settled then. And you are not going to go on one of your noble selfless self-pitying melancholies about this. Which reminds me," she continued, "you need to talk to Tonks."

"I..."

"Remus, I can count the number of people who she lets call her Nymphadora on one hand and have fingers left over."

"Oh. I suppose when I get the chance..."

Arthur shook his head. Remus didn't stand a chance against his wife. He anticipated an engagement by the end of May, if not sooner.

And frankly, he thought, all of this would do the man a world of good. He suspected that it had been a long time since someone had told him that he'd done right who wasn't Sirius.

He nearly snorted at the pun he'd just unintentionally made, but he held it in, and as he looked at Remus he saw a certain set come to his shoulders. Maybe, just maybe, he might be able to come to different terms with his condition, and himself.

And that could only be a good thing.

* * *

May 31, 1997

Brosnan stood with Lazenby and wondered where Arthur Weasley was. He'd sent him a message indicating that it was urgent and telling him what time to meet at, but he still wasn't here.

It was a bit annoying, but it was entirely possible that he'd been unavoidably delayed by whatever had caused him to send out the message. He'd seen the like happen before.

However, the real trouble was that the message almost certainly meant bad news, which was depressing, because things had been going so well. The PM had been quite impressed by the stack of werewolf bodies, and the Americans had managed to scrounge up some aerial vehicles that they had used to map out where their magical communities hid and send them over. Now this. He did not want to know what would have caused Arthur to call him out like this.

"Brosnan!" He heard from the darkness, and when Weasley came into view he saw that he looked utterly distraught.

"What's wrong?" He asked. "Your family-are they all right?"

Weasley shook his head. "They're fine. Bill took a nasty spell to the face that's going to leave him a fine scar, but he'll live. But, Timothy...they attacked Hogwarts. The Death Eaters. We were betrayed by one of our own, though I never trusted him. And he's dead, Brosnan. Dumbledore. The only wizard You-know-who ever feared is dead."

Well, that was a problem. That was a major problem. Brosnan cursed.

"So what happens now?"

Weasley looked at him, bleakly. "We fight on. There's not much else we can do. But it's going to be hard."

"Don't quit, Arthur," Brosnan said quietly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "If you should have need, call. We will be there."

"Yes, well—yes. But tell your Prime Minister that there will be dark days ahead."

"I certainly will. And...thank you."

"You're welcome. If you'll excuse me," the wizard said as he faded back into the shadows, "I must get back to my family."

Lazenby spoke after a couple of minutes. "What now?"

"We go tell the Prime Minister what's going on. And then we get ready for our lives to become extremely difficult."


	10. Chapter 10

July 29, 1997

Arthur leaned forward. "We can't go on like this, Kingsley. The whole country's gone mad."

"Tell me something I do not know, Arthur," Shacklebolt replied through the Floo Network, his usual imperturbabilty starting to fray a little. "Scrimgeour is growing more and more paranoid by the hour. Burbage is presumed dead at this point, and the only reason the public isn't more panicked is that they don't know Moody's dead."

He paused. "Truthfully, I am much more worried by the ones who don't seem worried at all. All of them were Death Eaters during the last war, or are children of Death Eaters."

He smiled wryly. "At least it makes determining who we need to watch easier." The smile disappeared. "Have you spoken with the Muggles lately?"

Arthur had told Kingsley about the family secret right after Dumbledore's death, with McGonagall along to back him up. Once they were done, the Auror had muttered something about "Dumbledore and his damned secrets" and then promised to keep it quiet.

Arthur hadn't told Shacklebolt that his older sons knew. What he didn't know couldn't be gotten out of him.

And how had they gotten to this point, anyway, where you didn't share confidences because you were worried they might be tortured out of someone?

"Not since I spoke with you last."

"Arrange a meeting. Soon. There's something afoot in the Ministry that I do not like. Scrimgeour may not be wise but he is not a Death Eater, and I do not think the Dark Lord will leave the Ministry in the hands of his enemies as he did the last time."

The Ministry in the hands of the Death Eaters would be…extremely bad. The last war had been bad enough when the Death Eaters had only been able to hamstring it. Perhaps Brosnan might know something about how to prevent such a thing from happening?

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"See if I can find out what is happening, and then see I we can prevent it. I already have plans in place for if they do take over, and though I hope we do not have to use them, I fear we shall have to. I must be going now. Be careful, Arthur."

And with that, his image disappeared from the flames.

"Kingsley again?" Molly asked from behind him.

"Yes. He thinks the Death Eaters might try to take over the Ministry, sooner rather than later." He turned to face her. "It may not be safe for anyone, soon."

"Should we...?" His wife actually seemed to be disappointed at the thought of canceling the wedding, and despite the circumstances Arthur had a difficult time restraining a smile at her change of attitude. A pity that it had taken Bill getting hexed in the face and Fleur angrily reacting to the idea that she might throw him over because of it to reconcile his wife to the matter, but he suspected it might be worth it in the long run.

Even so, it was an issue that deserved some thought. The guest list did run like a roster for the Order and its supporters, and if the Death Eaters decided to attack and they got lucky the war would be practically over. Then again, the Death Eaters never had been the kind to strike in broad daylight with anything near approaching equal odds, so such a thing was extremely unlikely. And besides, he'd be damned if he let them mess around with his life out of fear.

"No, I don't think so," he replied. "I don't think it's going to happen in the next few days. And besides, I think we're going to need some happy memories in the days ahead."

"You're probably right." She looked at him. "Arthur, are you sure about this plan of Harry's? It's just going to be the three of them, running about, and I know they've faced things they shouldn't have had to before and come out all right, but I still worry about them all."

Arthur nodded and took his wife in his arms. "I don't like it either. But someone has to find these Horcrux things, whatever they are, and who better than those three? They'll probably be safer than any of the rest of us, wandering about England.

"Now, what's left to do before tomorrow?"

* * *

August 3, 1997

Brosnan looked grimly around the table. "The Ministry of Magic has been taken over by Death Eaters," he said flatly. "They have not been able to remove all those who oppose them—yet—but they have already moved to consolidate power and act on their beliefs.

"To begin with, no child with magic that was born to non-magical parents will be allowed to attend wizarding school. The British government is rather concerned for their safety—and would rather not see them left out in the cold. Is there any chance that any of you could take them?"

Lincoln shook her head. "I thought something like this might come up, so I talked with my contact before I came here. The official line from the MACUSA is that it refuses to get involved with "purely internal matters.". Unofficially, the government struck a deal with its wizarding supremacists. They won't take in Britain's no-Maj born kids, and the American wizarding supremacists won't send volunteers to the Death Eaters."

Villiers spoke. "Beauxbatons might. I have also spoken with my contact, and while the Beauxbatons countries haven't come to an official position, mostly because no one's asked them, he thinks they'll be agreeable." He shrugged as only the French can. "They don't like Durmstrang much. And my country's wizards are much less antagonistic towards the sans-magie. Not a lot of witch hunts in Catholic countries, and the Dutch weren't known for it either."

Brosnan nodded. The Inquisition was known mostly for ruthlessness towards heretics and heathens—but it had also insisted on having actual evidence before burning a witch.

"Please get back to me as soon as you can. We may not have much time before the Death Eaters start actively killing these children. For one thing, the Ministry has also announced that all wizards and witches born to non-magical parents are to turn in their wands and submit themselves to questioning. Apparently they stole magic from non-magical children born to magical parents somehow."

Everyone looked at each other in astonishment. "How would that even work?" Ritter asked in disbelief. "How would they even know there was magic to steal? Does anyone actually believe it?"

"Does it matter?" Brosnan asked. "What matters is that they're willing to make this nonsense law." He looked around. "Does anyone here think that they'll stop with this?"

Ritter shook his head. "Nuremberg laws all over again. No, they won't." His jaw clenched. "I will speak to my contact and my government. But with the war in Kosovo, and so many German wizards gone there to either keep it going or to try and end the former's meddling, not to mention my government's commitments...it will be difficult to convince them to send anyone to you."

Villiers nodded unwillingly. "My situation is alike."

Trond spoke. "With this, I may be able to convince my government to act, though I hold no hope of the Radet intervening. If Britain should fall, Norway will not last long, I fear."

"I should be able to get more support as well," Lincoln added. "Maybe get some actual military people."

Perhaps there was hope after all.

* * *

October 15, 1997

It had not been a good two months. It had, actually, been an extraordinarily horrible two months. And he hadn't even gotten the worst of it.

That distinction went to people like Cattermole. At least by now the Muggle-borns had figured out that running was the only option, that the courts were shams. Most had had the sense to flee England, but some, like Ted Tonks, had stayed in order to fight, when the time came.

Much as his children had done, though Bill and Fleur were keeping as out of it as they could, for the time being. Well, Charlie was still off in Romania, but he was training someone to fill in for him taking care of the dragons. As soon as he was done with that, he'd be back here.

That, of course, brought up the question of whether to tell Fred and George about the family secret. Not telling Percy had been one his wiser moments as a father—his third son was working for the ministry, and was being a good little toady for Thicknesse and his Death Eater puppetmasters, where had he gone wrong in raising the boy—but with this war, the possibility that he, Bill, and Charlie might all die in quick succession was very real.

On the other hand, if there were any two of his children who might let it out in a careless moment, it would be Fred or George. Then again, if there was one thing they could keep quiet about, it was a joke. And they'd probably consider it quite a grand joke—particularly on Percy. At least they were keeping relatively quiet, mostly smuggling Muggle-borns out of Britain. Good boys, the both of them. And Ron was off with Harry, Horcrux hunting, and while he was fairly sure that he'd been one of the three people involved in the recent attack on the Ministry he knew all of them had gotten away.

He sighed. He was worried about Ginny more than any of the others, really. The Carrows had a bad reputation, and renaming Defense Against the Dark Arts to Dark Arts was not a good sign.

He snorted. Why didn't they just put a sign on their heads that read "evil?"

And Snape as the Headmaster. That wasn't good either. And Ginny never was one to keep her head down. On the other hand, when she, Neville, and Luna had tried to steal Gryffindor's sword, all they'd gotten for it was detention with Hagrid.

It was odd, when he thought about it, and made little sense.

"Mum? Dad?" He heard Ron say. What had happened?

* * *

January 15, 1998

It was certainly a good thing that the Norwegians had managed to pull together a team. They'd been incorporated into the guards at Clyde under the pretense of "enhancing NATO cooperation," and had freed up another SAS team as a result.

Said SAS team was working with the old hands, including Frobisher, and getting a crash course in fighting magical creatures and people.

Well, the old hands, Lupin, and Lupin's wife. That was a bit odd.

The werewolf had shown up two months before, with the woman who was his wife and insisted on being called Tonks. He suspected that she didn't like her first name, because she flushed whenever Lupin called her 'Dora.'

It wasn't an angry flush, though.

At any rate, the two of them had proved utterly invaluable. Apparently giants, thanks to their efforts in the last war, were staying out of this one, since they were nearly extinct, as were the werewolves. And none of the SAS men, former or current, had ever fought a wizard.

And it was a good thing that the first ones they had fought were in training, because it had not gone well. As it turned out, the deglamorizers could see through concealment spells. That was good.

However, some of the offensive spells the wizards used were quite powerful, and their Protego spell could hold up against several rifle rounds. Also, the effect on morale of having one of your mates suddenly being swarmed by a flock of bats was...not good. Also, the wizards had an ability called apparition, which was basically teleportation by another name.

The team, Williams', had all been hit within three minutes. While they had managed to hit Tonks, it was a rather discouraging performance, considering that there were sixteen of them. The new team hadn't even managed that.

However, both teams had learned from the experience quickly, as might be expected, and were soon able to take out the two wizards without suffering crippling losses in the process. The wizards, however, had learned as well. For one thing, magic did a number on electronics. Unless they had EMP shielding of some kind, any electronic device within ten feet of a cast spell went down hard. Fortunately the SAS didn't completely rely on radios and walkie-talkies, but it was still a bit of a jolt to lose them at the beginning of a firefight.

However, it had taken a little time, and that was something he wasn't sure how much they had. He was fairly certain that it wasn't as much as he would like, but that would be true regardless of how much time they had.

Today's exercise bade fair to be interesting. The Lupins were both there, and so was Dora's father Ted, who was going to be the exercise's unexpected element. The SAS men had been warned constantly to expect their wizarding enemies to get reinforcements without warning.

And it didn't look like they'd been paying attention, which meant that...

There he was, right next to the headquarters section. One, two, now they noticed, three, Tonks dodged behind a tree, four.

Ouch.

On the other hand, one of the other teams had noticed, and was now laying down fire on where he'd been. However, he'd already separated away. Even so, now the commandos were setting up an all-round defense, each team setting up in a circle.

He nodded. It was something they'd come up with after the squadron had set up an all-round defense and the Lupins had apparated right into the middle of it and taken out half of them. Three more had gone down in the ensuing crossfire, and the remaining five had fallen like wheat.

As a result, they'd decided that setting up to where each four-man group could look all around was better, as long as they kept out of each other's lines of fire.

Tonks dropped down between two of them, but he'd forgotten who he was dealing with, and he was tagged quick as quick.

Brosnan grinned. He still wasn't sure how well they'd do if and when it came time for the real fight, mostly because it would almost certainly involve facing a lot more wizards, but while he wasn't sure how ready they were, he knew they weren't unready. That would be good enough.

* * *

February 28, 1998

Things were not as bad as they could have been, Arthur thought. Voldemort's Death Eaters and Snatchers were spread thin, and the Order had managed a few successes, including ambushing Travers and Dolohov and a group of Snatchers who had caught wind of one of Fred and George's rescues. No survivors among the ambushees.

That had been a very good day.

Ron had left again shortly after Christmas. Arthur was of two minds about that. It had been good to have his son home, but he'd been decidedly unhappy, and very reticent about why he'd left his friends. The day he went to go find them was the happiest Arthur had seen him.

The boys were doing well, at least. Charlie was holed up with Bill and Fleur, and Fred and George, now that everyone who wanted out of Britain was out of Britain, were busy putting their talents to work making things that could be used for fighting. It was...rather depressing in some ways, to see his sons so determined to come up with better ways to kill people instead of better ways to give them some laughs.

On the other hand, several of the Order were of the opinion that their devices, often using magical means to substitute for Muggle technology, had saved their lives. So he couldn't get too upset with it.

However, Molly still worried about all of them, as did he. And there was Percy to think about. He still had no idea why he was still in the Ministry, although there were some very interesting rumors floating about that certain files weren't making it to the Minister's desk and that certain people were having a very difficult time getting appointments—usually people that Arthur didn't like. He hoped the rumors were true. Losing even one out of seven would be...painful.

Ginny was out of Hogwarts, anyway, at Molly's behest. He'd wanted her to leave before the Christmas holiday, but she was involved with keeping some kind of opposition to the Carrows and Snape going at the school, and he hadn't wanted to pull her away from that.

But Molly had finally managed to wear her down after Luna had suddenly vanished, and she'd agreed to leave earlier in the month. He suspected Neville Longbottom had also had something to do with it, and that the trump card he'd used was that the Carrows might try and go after Harry through her. And, truth be told, it made things a bit easier for him at the Ministry, knowing that Ginny was safe at home.

The fireplace lit up.

It was Charlie.

He looked grim.

"Lestrange and her crew of pet Snatchers got Ted Tonks," he announced. "Dean Thomas managed to get away to tell us. We think he took one with him, though."

That was heartening, at any rate, though it was still a bit of a jolt to hear that Ted was gone. He'd been a good man. He would mourn the loss later.

"Any other news?"

"Password is Wulfric."

Potterwatch was about the only place you could get real news these days. Even within the Ministry, where everyone knew better, the official line was the current rot. Even so, even men like Albert Runcorn were unable to keep at least some disbelief out of their voices as they parroted the lines they were given.

Of course, it wasn't surprising the Death Eaters were being run ragged. They'd become more hated than feared. If they'd had the giants and werewolves, they might have been winning at this point. As things were, however, the odds were about even, and anything could tip the balance.

Anything at all.

* * *

March 10, 1998

Brosnan lowered the binoculars and looked over at Williams. "Can you take the place?" he asked.

"No question of whether we can—rather, whether we should. I know that I want to turn that place into so much rubble. But I do know the wizards've had some problems with us getting involved in the past."

Brosnan shook his head. "Not this time. Not after everything that's happened." According to Weasley, there were no neutrals now that Voldemort's minions had taken over, and the wizards had experienced what happened when wizard supremacists took control. After that...well, non-magical involvement didn't seem so bad, apparently.

"And besides. They tortured children." Although there was some ambiguity about whether a seventeen-year-old should be considered a child. Still. The torture was bad enough by itself.

Williams nodded. "When do we attack?"

"When would be best?"

"Early morning. We can either wear the deglamorizers or night vision, we can't do both. We've tried."

That was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped. "Right. Remus and Dora will both be here tonight. Tomorrow or the day after?"

"Day after. I'd like some time to get to know the ground."

"You'll have it," Brosnan promised, and turned his eyes back to Malfoy Manor, where Lestrange and her Snatchers were quartered. Ted Tonks had been a good man. It was time to pay the debt.

When the Lupins arrived they began to draw up plans immediately, refining them as the SAS men reconnoitered the area. Brosnan was concerned about their opponents apparating away, but apparently there were anti-apparition charms set up around the house, and even the owners could not get around them.

That seemed rather foolish, but he wasn't going to complain about his enemies being idiots. They made the plan carefully, though, leaving as little to chance as possible.

They struck at dawn of the next day. They knew where the targets slept, and that none of them were early risers. However, they also knew that the house was protected against intruders by alarm and trap spells, something the Lupins had determined.

However, all of these were set at ranges suitable to catch wand-wielders.

Which was why there was no sign of alarm when four grenades crashed through the master bedroom's windows and blew it into a shower of splinters and shards.

At that moment, the assault teams ran for the house, while snipers sat back and waited for targets to appear.

CRACK! "Target down. Appeared to be female."

CRACK! "Target down. Male."

The assault teams, led by the Lupins, breached the doors.

"Two targets down. Two males."

"That's six out of nine, be careful. The rest are going to be ready to put up a fight."

Almost immediately Brosnan heard the sounds of spells impacting and rifles blazing as the surviving inhabitants of the manor tried to get back some of their own, and he cursed the fact that he couldn't be with them right now.

It did not take long, however, for the fighting to stop, and less time to hear Captain Sterling, the leader of the assault teams, say "Targets down. Beginning sweep."

It did not take long. The Malfoys had died in their bed. Lestrange had a bullet through her skull. And the other six were the Snatcher gang that had killed Ted Tonks and grabbed those kids.

"Do either of you have any suggestions for what we should do next?" He asked the Lupins, once all was said and done.

"Yes," Dora replied. "Burn it down. The whole place."

"I'll not argue," he said with a slight grimace. The place just smelled foul.

He looked at Williams. "Can it be done?"

The commando smiled and looked at the wizards. "Do you want to try and see how we can get my explosives and your magic to work together?"

"Yes," the Lupins said in unison.

The results turned out to be extraordinarily satisfactory.

* * *

March 19, 1998

The reaction to the devastation of Malfoy Manor had not been what Weasley had expected. Well, among those who'd decided that Voldemort's regime was to be endured or fought rather than celebrated, it was as he expected—in public, well-suppressed glee. In private, explosions of joy and happiness.

However, he'd been a little surprised by the reaction shown by the Death Eaters and their ilk. He'd been expecting anger and wrath and the like. And there was that. But there was also a lot of fear. They were absolutely terrified of whatever had turned Malfoy Manor into kindling and rubble.

Because, so far, no one knew what it was. The Daily Prophet seemed to be trying to decide whether it wanted to pretend like nothing had happened or that it was some kind of outrage perpetrated by Muggle-borns.

He suspected the reason they hadn't gone with the latter wholeheartedly was that the Malfoys were one of the most loathed families in Britain by everyone who wasn't in their circles, and Lestranges were like them. The _Prophet_ was hardly going to give people a reason to like Muggle-borns, after all.

Even so, there was something disconcerting about how they'd done it. Going after a man in his own home...it didn't sit right with him. It didn't quite sit right with the Lupins, either. But it didn't sit as badly with him as it probably should, and it sat even less badly with them, unsurprisingly.

He hoped this war would end soon. Brosnan had told him that one of the weird things about war was that you became more like your enemy the longer you fought them.

He really did not want to become like the Death Eaters.

At least Ron, Hermione and Harry were now safe at Bill and Fleur's, although Bill had said they were making plans to do something or other involving Gringotts. He didn't know what, and had no plans to find out.

Arthur understood why his son was reluctant. He took all his responsibilities seriously, and if he knew that his brother and his friends were planning to win Gringotts he would have to decide between them. As long as he didn't know, he didn't have to decide.

And neither did Arthur.

He looked down at the paperwork in front of him and chuckled. He wasn't sure who the Death Eaters thought they were fooling with this latest nonsense about Muggle diseases and asking everyone to report who had come into contact with someone who might have one.

Probably it was something they'd come up with to convince Voldemort that they were doing something. However, he intended to have a bit of fun with this, because they had included a way to submit the report forms anonymously.

He started humming as he drew up reports for the Crabbes, Goyles, and the Flints. Perhaps the Bulstrodes next?


	11. Chapter 11

May 1, 1998, 1900 GMT

Things had been rather quiet since the attack on Malfoy Manor, and there were a lot fewer unexplainable storms and vanishings and random deaths than there had been. However, even though apparently the Death Eaters had been scared by the attack, Brosnan also knew that Voldemort and his crew still ran wizarding Britain.

As a result, the lull made him fairly certain that they were planning something big, and he had no idea what it would be. Parliament? Buckingham Palace? Westminister? Clyde? So many targets, so little means to protect them.

At least they'd been able to read-in a few more people, mostly the immediate security for the Prime Minister and the Royal Family, and get them the deglamorizers. The more people who knew about this stuff, the better, as long as they were professionals. He shuddered at the thought of some of the backbenchers or Ministers finding out about it.

It would be all over the tabloids in a week. If it took that long. And then, with everything that was happening...the hysteria would make his job near-impossible.

Arthur suddenly appeared in his office, out of breath and nearly panicked.

"There's been a...complication."

That wasn't good.

"What sort of complication?" Brosnan demanded, already figuring out who he was going to call first, depending on what the wizard told him.

"My son and his friends robbed our bank in order to take an artifact they need to defeat You-Know-Who, and they got found out doing it. They escaped, but You-Know-Who killed most of the bank's employees. Well, they must have found something else there besides what they were looking for, because then they went to Hogwarts of all places and started some kind of revolt there. Now You-Know-Who's on his way with his Death Eaters to kill everyone there."

Well. That certainly was both better and worse than it could have been. At least the Death Eaters weren't hitting Parliament or the Royals. On the other hand, now a lot of children were in danger.

Then again...this was an opportunity to get Voldemort and his minions all in one place, attacking a target they wouldn't want to retreat from. If they could hammer them hard here, it would go a long way towards ending this crisis.

"Get back to your friends, Arthur. Tell them we'll be at Hogwarts as soon as we can, and not to be worried when our helicopters come in."

"But they won't be able to—"

"They will. Now go, man! I need to call everyone."

Weasley went, and Brosnan immediately began dialing the number for the barracks where Williams and his men were staying. He didn't need to call the helicopters—they were on ready standby, and would be flying in half-an-hour's time.

Williams, unsurprisingly picked up the phone on the second ring, and sounded quite awake when he said, "Major Williams."

"Hogwarts is under attack, and we need to get there as soon as we can. And yes, that we means that I'm coming with you."

The major did not even try to dissuade him, but instead said only, "if you're not here by the time we're ready to leave, you'll be left behind."

"Understood."

* * *

May 1, 1998, 2330 GMT

Arthur watched the skies nervously. Voldemort and his crowd were gathering outside, and the mood among the defenders of Hogwarts was...apprehensive.

There were naught but Dementors and Death Eaters out there, thank goodness, but even so, the defenders were badly outnumbered, and even with the school's magical defenses, it was going to be a very bad night for everyone involved.

He winced. Voldemort's offer might have been tempting, had there not been ample evidence to believe that the man was prone to go back on his word at the drop of a hat. He'd as soon have handed one of his children over as hand over Harry—though not sooner, even in Percy's case.

And that was both the good and bad thing about who was here tonight. Everyone had shown up. Lupin and Tonks. Molly and all of the children, even Percy, who apparently had been doing a lot to obstruct the Death Eaters plans by being the most pedantic and unhelpful bureaucrat possible, and Fleur. Shacklebolt. Fabian Prewett. Nearly every sixth and seventh year from Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor. All of the teachers—except Snape and the Carrows of course. It was enormously heartening.

It was also enormously nerve-wracking. Nearly all of his friends and family were here, and those who weren't were either on their way or had left the country. It would be the most extraordinary luck if none of them fell to the Death Eaters. He could hope for it, but could not count on it.

A peculiar noise caught his attention. It was a curious sound, a sort of whop-whop-whop-whop, and there seemed to be more than one of whatever was making it, it seemed to be coming from the sky, and it was moving towards them.

"What in Merlin's name is that?" he heard Fabian ask as he looked up and saw four strange shapes in the night sky.

"I believe those are what Muggles call helicopters," Arthur replied.

"What are they doing here?"

"I believe they are reinforcing us."

"Reinforce—Arthur, have you been keeping secrets? You know that—"

"Dumbledore knew about this, as did my father, and so do Kingsley and McGonagall."

His brother-in-law looked at him. "Did my sister know?"

"Yes."

"Well. I guess there was a good reason to keep it secret, if _she_ was able to keep her mouth shut, even to me. But you could have mentioned the possibility."

* * *

May 1, 1998 2335 GMT

Brosnan looked down at the castle and wondered how the defenders were reacting to their probably unexpected, but hopefully not unwelcome, appearance. At least they'd been able to get some photo reconnaissance done in the past few months, so they knew that there was a place to land outside the castle, large enough for all four to land at once. Brosnan would have rather landed in the castle, but apparently electronics did not work at Hogwarts, so that was not an option unless they wanted to land much faster than was safe or healthy and without instruments.

The one he and the major were in was in the lead, and that had been an... interesting...experience. For one thing, the FLIR indicated that the castle was surrounded and under siege. For another, while passing over the lines, he'd felt a cold chill, through his whole body and into his soul. Like he'd never be warm again.

When he looked over at the major, he saw that even the commando looked a bit stricken, but decided not to mention it. The feeling began to pass, however, once they were halfway between the castle and its besiegers, and almost gone by the time as they began the descent to the landing zone.

The plan that he and the major had talked out was rather simple, as far as plans went, but that was a virtue. Once everyone had debarked, two of the four helicopters would leave to refuel, while the other two would stay to provide air support, keeping well above Hogwarts until needed. Meanwhile, he and the commandos would rush inside as fast as they could and try to avoid getting killed by the besiegers.

Hopefully, they would be let in with little fuss, and then incorporate themselves into the castle's defenses. The major wanted to keep each of the squadrons together as a group, and Brosnan agreed. The four-man teams had proven far too vulnerable on their own in their practices with the Lupins.

He looked down and saw the ground swiftly rising toward them, and he swallowed. When he stepped on the ground, there'd be no turning back, and for a moment he wished that he wasn't here.

But then the helicopter leveled out, and there was no time to think anymore as everyone piled out as fast as they could, ducking to keep their heads under the whirling blades.

And then they were running, as fast as they could, to the gates of Hogwarts. Brosnan was rather glad that he was carrying a submachinegun instead of an assault rifle, and that he wasn't carrying the full kit that the SAS men were packing, but just a few extra magazines and some food and water. Even so, he was still barely keeping up with them, and he nearly missed it when they turned to go through the castle gate.

Once they had reached the courtyard, he stopped, panting and wheezing and swearing mentally to run more often. He looked up and saw Arthur, and a black man and an older silver-haired woman that he did not recognize.

"Mr Brosnan," the black man said, extending his hand as the gates closed with a great boom. "Kingsley Shacklebolt, head of the Aurors' office, and along with Professor Minerva McGonagall," he nodded to the older woman, "commander of the defenses of Hogwarts. Arthur's told me a lot about you—and you, Major.

"I have known of you for a long time," he continued, quietly, "and I never suspected that the day would come when we would fight with you against those who would enslave or kill all who are not as they are. But you are here, and I am glad to have you."

His manner changed, then, and Brosnan understood why he was leading this desperate defense. "You fight differently than we do, or so Arthur tells me. Where will you be most effective, do you think?"

This was not his field, and he motioned to Williams. "Major?"

The commando and Shacklebolt immediately set to discussing how best to deploy the SAS, a discussion Brosnan knew was not his purview. Instead, he turned to Weasley.

"How many here?" He asked quietly.

"Less than a hundred."

"So few?"

"We would have fewer, if I had any say in it," Weasley said quietly. "Twenty-three of those are students here, or should be."

Brosnan was horrified. "You're using children?"

"D'you think I want to?" Weasley hissed. "My daughter and all six of my sons are here. If I could get them to leave I would, but they understand what's at stake all too well, and as much as said that they were staying whether we wanted them to or not." He sighed. "It was an effort to make the younger students leave."

Brosnan winced. His father hadn't spoken much of his time in the War, but he'd been in one of the British divisions assigned to the Canadian 1st Army in the Netherlands, and one night he'd told him about the Resistance fighters he'd met, and many of them had begun when they were thirteen or fourteen. Some of them had killed more Jerries than his father had.

He supposed that things in the wizarding world must have been like that, these past several months. And these children, all of them, were either marked for death or knew someone who was. Small wonder they wanted to fight.

"Never mind. I spoke without thinking." He looked about. Shacklebolt and the major were having a very enthusiastic discussion, and one of the squadrons was already heading towards the huge doors at the end of the courtyard.

Weasley looked at them. "They are a grim lot," he said. "But they remind me a bit of old Mad-Eye. Never a better man in a fight." He looked at Brosnan. "Remus told me about training with them. Fighting and training to fight is all they do. You Muggles call them soldiers. We have few such."

"And that is good for you, that you have no need for them. Believe me."

* * *

May 1, 1998, 2345 GMT

Arthur shook his head.

"No. We've had wars, and plenty of them. Remus and Tonks've told me about your SAS and how they fight. I don't think any of us know how to fight like that, at all. I rather wish we did. Voldemort and his Death Eaters would find us a much tougher nut to crack."

He paused. The major and Shacklebolt seemed to have finished—and become friends, he thought wryly as they shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder before the major joined the rest of his men and made for the Great Hall. Brosnan seemed rather shocked by the display, and Weasley wondered why.

Shacklebolt came over to them.

"Mr Brosnan," he said politely but firmly, "midnight comes swiftly, and that is when Voldemort will attack. Please go to the Great Hall, if you would. I need to speak with Arthur."

Once the Muggle was out of earshot, Shacklebolt spoke. "An interesting man, the major. I believe he may know more of war than I or any other wizard living." He paused. "Remind me, Arthur, to ask Mr Brosnan if we can get some of these SAS fellows to train myself and the other Aurors in their tactics."

That was Shacklebolt. Always thinking ahead, even when it seemed unlikely that they'd have a future.

He looked up. "Midnight comes. Go join your wife, Arthur. Unpleasant surprises for Voldemort or not," how strange, Arthur thought, that we find the courage to use his name when he's about to try and kill us all, and not beforehand, "this will be a bad night."

"Where will you be?" Arthur asked.

"Wherever the fighting is fiercest," Shacklebolt replied. "There will not be much call for commanders once it begins. Now go!"

It did not take long for him to reach Molly, standing on the southern wall near Bill, Fleur, and Charlie. She looked at him, and he at her. There was not time enough in the world for them to say everything they wanted to say, but there was time enough for what needed to be said.

"Until the end, love," he said quietly, and she took his hand and squeezed it in hers.

"Until the end," she replied, midnight struck, and the Dementors and Death Eaters swarmed forward.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0000 GMT

Brosnan swallowed when he saw the oncoming charge. There must be a thousand of them.

"Not near so many," Williams replied, and he flushed as he realized he'd spoken aloud.

"There might," he continued, "be two or three hundred wizards. Probably closer to two. Those creature that Shacklebolt here calls Dementors might give them another two to three hundred."

Still, that was a lot, and he shuddered as he thought of what it might have looked like with giants and werewolves added in. That would have been something out of a nightmare.

Instead, it was something of a very bad dream, and he hefted the submachinegun. Even the SAS men seemed a little nervous, which was surprising, but then he remembered what he'd heard about what had happened to the Americans in Mogadishu and how their superior training and tech had been overcome by sheer weight of numbers and firepower, and winced. Then again, in Mogadishu they'd been short on local allies.

He wasn't. In fact, he was almost spoiled for them.

The snipers began to fire. He couldn't see what effect they were having, but he was fairly sure that they were hitting their targets. He'd learned what a frustrated commando sounded like.

These were satisfied commandos, and he wondered what the Death Eaters were thinking as their fellows dropped dead hundreds of meters away from the enemy. From what Lupin had said, most fights between wizards took place at pistol range or less.

He could only imagine how they'd react once the machine guns and assault rifles started in on them.

However, the SAS didn't open fire once the Death Eaters got into range, and he looked quizzically at Williams.

The major grinned like a death's head. "In the last war, most of the problems we had were about finding the bastards. Well, here they all are, right here. I'd like to kill as many as I possibly can while they're out in the open. And that means drawing them in."

Ah. Yes. Quite. That made a lot of sense.

"So you plan to begin firing once they enter the castle?"

"Yes."

A sudden wave of cold and fear slammed into him, and he nearly staggered.

The major and Shacklebolt both looked up. "Sloppy coordinating," was all the commando said.

"Agreed," the wizard replied, pointed his wand, and shouted "Expecto Patronum!"

A ghostly white lynx erupted out of the wand, and Craig instantly felt the fear drain from him as the temperature went up. He looked up and saw a multitude of white lights around the castle, and dark shapes stopped in mid-air, or swooped about futilely trying to break through.

Then the helicopters opened fire. They weren't entirely sure if it was possible to kill Dementors—fire didn't seem to work, and magic didn't either, but wizards tended not to try other methods. Each of the choppers had a 7.62mm minigun mounted for ground support, and if they didn't work on the Dementors, they'd work on the Death Eaters.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

3600 rounds per minute slammed into the hooded figures, each of which withstood the fire for about five seconds or so before disintegrating under the impacts.

That was good to see. Unfortunately, the Dementors weren't stupid, and they figured out quickly what was killing them. At which point they diverted from the walls, and lofted up and over the wizards and went straight for the helicopters.

At which the helicopters went straight up as well, and flew away, the Dementors in hot pursuit.

And that was it for their air support.

On the other hand, the monsters made up a much larger portion of Voldemort's forces than the choppers did of theirs, so it was a net win.

Now they just had to hold off a force that outnumbered them three-to-one.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0015 GMT

Arthur ducked the spell cast at him and cast one right back. It went a little wild, but it did cause the Death Eater to step to the side and run right into the one Charlie had cast in his direction, and as he staggered and fell the ones behind him ducked back behind the corners.

The Death Eaters weren't nearly as aggressive as he'd expected them to be. He'd been at Ottery St. Catchpole in the last war, and they'd come on hard even after they were discovered. Their charge on the castle had been fast as well.

Now that they were inside, however, they seemed...tentative. He wasn't sure why. Which didn't mean they weren't still dangerous, he thought as he ducked to the side to get out of the way of two curses.

Charlie turned and cast one in the direction that those'd come from, and he thought he saw someone he recognized from the Ministry over there. Wilmore, a hardcore wizard supremacist of the worst sort. He threw a curse that way as well.

"Arthur!" Molly yelled from where she was holding the hallway with Andromeda Tonks, Bill, and Fleur. "They're getting around us!"

Damnation. That was the problem with Hogwarts—too many ways to get around, and it was too big to defend properly, at least with the few they had. At least the sheer number of hallways meant being cut off was unlikely.

"Right. Go to the fallback position!"

That was one of the things Remus and Tonks had introduced to the Order from their time training with the Muggles, and he'd wondered why not even the Aurors had ever heard of the notion before.

Then again, from what he'd overheard, these Muggles considered this a small-unit action, the kind that happened on a regular basis for them, which meant they had a lot of practice. As far as he knew, this was the biggest battle in Britain since the Goblin Wars.

He ducked another curse, then looked over at Charlie. "Ready?" he asked his son, and they both started sending curses as fast as they could throw them at the two Death Eaters, while the others ran for it.

"Now, Arthur," Molly shouted, and he looked over at Charlie to make sure he'd heard. He had, and they ran pell-mell back to where the other four were.

They ducked around the corner, and Arthur took the time to catch a few wheezing breaths. Battle was definitely a young man's game, he thought as he looked over at Bill, who gave him a grim smile, and Charlie, who almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

His second son looked across the hallway, where he stood next to Andromeda, and grinned at him. "Not worse than dealing with a Horntail, Dad. Trust me on this one."

Charlie always had liked danger. He hoped the others were all right.

"Come on, the cowards ran this way!" He heard someone yell. Yes, that was definitely Wilmore.

He'd forgotten just how obnoxious the man's voice was, although that might have been colored by the fact that he was an unpleasant human. He was also, he recalled, a bit of a blowhard. If he thought they were fleeing, he'd be charging.

"They're coming," Charlie whispered. "Three, two, one."

And they all stuck their wands into the hallway and let fly.

By the time the six of them were done, not a single Death Eater was standing.

"Come on," Bill said. "There'll be more elsewhere."


	12. Chapter 12

May 2, 1998, 0130 GMT

Hogwarts was in complete chaos, and the only places that weren't were where the SAS were stationed, as near as Lazenby could tell. Defenders and attackers were all mixed in together by now, and it was hard to pick out targets.

Before the battle had dissolved into a confusing melee that they couldn't fire into without risking killing friend and foe, though, the SAS had done the attackers some serious damage. Two machine guns covered the main gate, and they'd held fire until the Death Eaters who'd broken through it started to disperse.

Fifty had come through there, and he didn't think more than ten had made it out of the courtyard alive. Even so, they hadn't gone alone—one of the Death Eaters had cast a blasting spell, which had taken out one of the positions, and both soldiers in it.

He lifted the submachinegun to the ready again and looked for a target. It was a good thing that the Death Eaters went in for black, he thought, or friendly fire would be a much bigger problem.

The sounds of fighting were nearly continuous, and he coughed when a particularly dense smoke cloud flowed over him. The castle had caught on fire—what, a hour ago? He wasn't sure.

There! A black-robed figure poked its head out from behind one of the columns. He shifted his aim slightly and fired off a burst.

Crackcrackcrackcrackcrack!

The figure ducked back behind the column.

He sighed. It had been like that for the past hour or so. The Death Eaters had figured out quick that they did not want to be in sight of the castle rooftops for very long. He grinned. They'd tried to infiltrate from the bottom floors and take the defenders in the rear.

However, young...Longbottom? That was his name—had been rather helpful with ways to prevent that.

He didn't know exactly what mandrakes were, but even their faint cries made his head hurt, and he'd gotten a slight nosebleed. And he'd never heard of a plant that actively sought out victims before, but that venomous tentacula had proved to be a very effective tripwire.

"Major!" He heard one of the commandos on this section of the roof yell. "Spiders at the gate!"

He actually sounded a little frightened, and Lazenby turned to look at the gate and froze. There was a veritable horde of giant arachnids swarming into the castle, and he was sure the Death Eaters were involved with it somehow.

The SAS were well-trained. Almost before the Major told them to fire, they were knocking the spiders down like tenpins. He added his submachinegun to the defense, but a thought came to his mind. Where were the choppers, and where were the Dementors?

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0200 GMT

Arthur looked around wearily. The night had already been a long one, and it wasn't nearly over yet. Hogwarts was an utter shambles, with corpses and rubble lying all over the place.

Most of them were black-clad, but that any of them weren't was a sore loss, and he was glad he hadn't had time to check who they were. There were some things he didn't want to know right now.

He looked over at Molly, who looked just as tired as he did. Still, she had that look that said she was ready to fight, one he hoped he had himself. Charlie's expression was more subdued than it had been, but he still looked fresh and eager—in fact, he looked like he'd almost been enjoying himself. Bill's expression resembled Charlie's, while Fleur looked like she would kill anyone or anything that even looked like it would threaten her husband. Andromeda...just looked grim, as she had ever since he'd brought her word of Ted's death.

They'd been running all over Hogwarts, trying to keep one step ahead of the Death Eaters while also doing them as much damage as possible. Which, as near as he could tell, was what all of the defenders had been doing except for the Muggles, though he didn't know where anyone else was.

The last time he'd seen any of the others had been half an hour ago. They'd been just about to reach Remus and Tonks and Fabian before a group of twenty Death Eaters had cut them off from each other and both groups had to fall back. They'd only managed to get away a few minutes ago.

He wasn't sure where they were now, exactly. Somewhere near Gryffindor Tower—he recognized the hallway, or thought he did, it was a little difficult to tell with a large hole in the wall with two bodies lying in it. One of whom, now that he had a chance to see it, was little Colin Creevey.

Damn it. He hoped Molly didn't see. Colin had been in Ginny's year, and they hadn't seen her since the fighting started. He'd told Fred and George to stay with her, and they'd promised they would, but things happened.

He looked over at Molly. She was looking down the hallway to see if they were being followed. "We haven't seen anyone but Death Eaters for half an hour," he began.

The others nodded. While the Death Eaters had come off the worst during their pursuit, it was a little worrying.

"We should try and make it back to the Great Hall," Charlie said. "That's the final fallback position." Bill and Fleur nodded agreement, as did Molly, still looking down the hall. "Yes."

"Andy?"

"Yes."

"Let's go then."

It was a nerve-wracking few minutes, making their way through the rubble and smoke to the Great Hall. He didn't see anyone they knew along the way, at least, though some of the bodies looked young enough that the children might know them.

The occasional gunshots did not help his state of mind, although they did serve as a good reminder to get a move on. When they finally made it there, it was quite a relief.

When they entered, however, that sense of relief fled. The Great Hall was a shambles, and...oh no. There were bodies on the floor. Several of them.

Tonks knelt beside one of them, quietly weeping, and Weasley knew that Remus' long struggle was over. And there were George and Ginny and...Percy.. gathered...

Arthur broke into a run, followed by his sons and wife and daughter-in-law.

He skidded to a halt just short of the blanket where Fred's body lay. Now that he had a moment, he felt his eyes water and his heart crumple as he dropped to his knees next to his son's corpse. Why Fred? Why couldn't it have been him?

He felt Molly's arms wrap around him as she joined him on the floor, and he embraced her as Charlie and Bill put their hands on his shoulders.

And for a little while, he let himself mourn for his son.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0245 GMT

Brosnan grimaced as he joined Williams, Shacklebolt, and McGonagall in the Great Hall, which was both the field hospital and the morgue. He'd seen death before, but never quite like this. Never so much of it in one place.

"How many?" he asked Williams.

"Four of my lads," the major said quietly. "And about a dozen wizards. Some of them students."

Brosnan cursed. The Death Eaters had a lot to answer for.

"Any word from the choppers?"

The major shook his head. "No." It would have been easy to miss the concerned undertones, but they were there.

"How many of theirs?"

"At least fifty that we know of, and almost certainly more," Shacklebolt answered. "And we think we got most of the spiders, as well. We're still outnumbered, but the odds are a lot better."

That was good, but that meant there were still around two hundred Death Eaters out there.

And that also assumed that the Dementors didn't come back after taking out the choppers, which they might have. He didn't know what the cold that surrounded the creatures might have done to local flying conditions, but it couldn't be good.

Shacklebolt continued. "We'll concentrate here to meet the next attack. Most of the school's defenses have been destroyed, and we can't afford to spread ourselves out at this point."

He looked at the ruins, with a thousand-yard stare. "I've fought before. I've killed before. I've seen my friends die before. But I've never seen anything like this."

Brosnan understood completely. He hadn't even had Shacklebolt's experience, before tonight. He'd never really been in a firefight, outside of training.

The major, however, had. "You and McGonagall did well. Didn't lose your heads once. That's the key thing, really." He snorted. "Now Voldemort had no control over this battle from the beginning. No reserves to exploit a breakthrough, just throw everything in and hope for the best. Idiot."

The major sounded utterly disgusted, and for a very brief moment Brosnan found it difficult not to smile. His tone was that of a master craftsman looking at the work of a particularly incompetent apprentice.

"Do you think he'll try it again, Major?" McGonagall asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. If those Dementors show up again he might, but if not he might try talking us into surrender. We've hurt him badly."

Then a voice broke in on them. It was a raspy thing, that spoke of death and decay and degeneracy.

"Who is that?" he asked.

"Voldemort. He must want to talk."

He had to admit that it was a little unnerving. After a brief discussion of the SAS presence—the exact words used had been "Muggle hirelings, brought in against all tradition" he'd then gone on to promise that he would attack and slaughter them all if Harry Potter didn't give himself up by dawn.

Once he was done, the major shook his head. "The only thing I'm worried about if they try another attack is ammunition. We've used up more than half of ours, but as long as it holds out they can't take us." His smile was that of a death's head. "And if they wait to attack in daylight it'll be even worse for them than it was last night."

Shacklebolt cleared his throat. "Very comforting, major, and I trust your judgment, though I would not have turned young Potter over to Voldemort in any case."

"Mr. Potter, however, is inclined to suicidal bravery," McGonagall said flatly. "He will go to Voldemort of his own accord if we don't stop him. Where is he?"

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0300 GMT

Arthur had heard Voldemort's cruel, mocking speech, of course, and he'd wanted to scream in rage. This wasn't about Harry, this was about whether or not being a wizard meant being a bloody tyrant or a decent human being.

But...damn it. Harry had to have heard it too. And he would go straight into the trap, even knowing it was a trap. And then Voldemort would attack anyway.

He looked over at Ginny, and knew she'd realized the same thing.

"Harry," she whispered, "we have to find Harry."

She started to get to her feet, looking grimly determined. "If he thinks that he's going to go off alone and die for us, he's wrong. Fred didn't die because of him."

The others nodded, and Arthur, broken from his grief, took a moment to look about, and realized that most everyone was still alive. Though some, he thought as he looked over at Tonks, probably didn't want to be.

As he thought about what he'd seen this night, he began to realize something. Voldemort was bluffing. He was desperate. He had seen far more dead Death Eaters than defenders.

In fact...young Creevey was the only one body he'd seen who wasn't here now. That didn't mean there weren't others, of course, but when he saw Fabian step through the door one of the doors into the hall and walk towards where Tonks knelt he finally took hold of something he hadn't felt in some time.

Hope.

But then fear returned, and he turned to Ginny. "Where's Harry been?" he asked.

"Looking for Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem. He said something about killing Voldemort."

Then he remembered what Ron had told Bill. Voldemort had split his soul into multiple parts and embedded them in various items, and as long as they existed he couldn't be killed.

That was why he, Harry, and Hermione had gone off into the wild, to find and destroy those artifacts so that Voldemort could be killed. According to Ron, they'd destroyed several of them already, but there were a few left. The Ravenclaw diadem must have been one of them.

Then he heard running feet, and he turned to see Ron and Hermione running from the direction of the haunted bathroom. That was a relief, anyway.

"Where's Harry?" Ron asked.

Ginny spoke, then. "I thought he was with you!"

Both of them looked stricken. "The diadem's gone—Goyle did for it when he cast Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement," Ron got out. "Then Harry told us to get to the Chamber of Secrets and use the basilisk fangs to destroy the Horcrux in Hufflepuff's Cup, that he had something he needed to do..."

He cursed as the realization struck him.

"He's going to go out to meet Voldemort, if we don't stop him."

Arthur was struck by the fact that he hadn't heard anyone say "you-know-who" the entire night. Strange. It was almost like Voldemort was less frightening now that he was out in the open.

Then again, wasn't that true of everything? Your imagination was always worse than reality. Well, almost and oh, damn.

"Fred!" His son's voice cracked as he said his brother's name. Hermione said nothing as she went with him to his side.

He should have seen that coming, but what good would that have done? He would no more have stopped Ron from mourning than from breathing.

He looked at Bill, Charlie, and Percy, who had stepped back a little. "Go see if you can find Harry, and take your uncle Fabian with you. Be back here in an hour, though."

They nodded, and headed for the door.

He looked at Molly and inclined his head questioningly towards where the leaders of the defense were talking. She nodded, and went to Ron and Hermione. He would rather have been with them, but he had bad news to deliver.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0315 GMT

Brosnan turned when he heard footsteps heading towards them. It was Weasley, and he had a rather grim look on his face. This did not bode well.

McGonagall spoke first. "Arthur, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault my son is dead," he said quietly. "But Harry went off alone to track down a Horcrux an hour ago, and no one's seen him since."

"Not even your son and Miss Granger?"

"No. He sent them to destroy another Horcrux with basilisk fangs."

"How very like him. Now what?"

Shacklebolt spoke. "If Mr Potter goes to meet Voldemort alone, he will almost certainly die. At which point, Voldemort will almost certainly bring the body here in order to gloat, doubtless with all of the Death Eaters."

He turned to Williams. "They will certainly all gather in the courtyard."

The major frowned. "Sounds like a fool thing to do. Is he that stupid?"

Shacklebolt laughed then. "In this, Major, yes. He is a man who, given the choice between the dramatic, romantic choice and the practical one, will choose the former every time. Not only that, but he believes that because the Death Eaters fell apart without him—indeed, they did not even try to find a successor—that we, likewise, will fall apart without Mr Potter."

He bared his teeth, then, in what could not be called a smile. "He is, in that regard, quite mistaken, as he always is in how people think."

The major grinned. "In that case, we can make proper arrangements. I presume you'll be standing in front of the doors?"

"Yes."

"Good. If you'll excuse me, I need to go reposition the lads. Brosnan, would you mind staying here?"

He didn't. The major had forgotten more about tactics than he would ever know, while here, he might be able to do his actual job.

Well, he might have been able to his job if Shacklebolt and McGonagall hadn't immediately started giving orders. Within five minutes, everyone there was moving about.

Some were moving the badly injured to the infirmary, some were moving the dead to a safe spot, and others were moving bits of debris to the sides and making fighting positions.

Leaving Shacklebolt, McGonagall, Weasley, and himself standing up by what he guessed was the teachers' table.

McGonagall looked at him. "So, Mr Brosnan. What happens after this?"

He looked at her and spoke carefully. "What do you mean?"

"Don't pretend to be a half-wit. Before tonight, we three were the only wizards who knew that you Muggles knew about us."

Weasley suddenly looked guilty.

She glared at him. "Who did you tell?"

"Well I couldn't very well keep it from my wife, could I? And then I told Bill and Charlie, once they came of age. Never did tell Percy."

"At least that was sensible," McGonagall muttered.

Now it was Weasley's turn to glare. "Suppose I'd died without telling anyone. Would you have known how to get in touch with Brosnan here?'

McGonagall looked grumpy, but she stopped glaring at Weasley and turned back to him, her expression softened. "Now everyone here knows that you know we exist. And all your soldiers know we exist too. I don't think we'll be able to solve this with Obliviation, will we?"

He decided to, finally, tell the whole truth. "No. Many of our allies know as well, and have their own liaisons. And we have records, kept in places I don't know about. You can't pull the rabbit hole in after yourselves after this, not like you've been able to do before."

McGonagall looked over at Shacklebolt. "This will cause a lot of problems, Kingsley."

"It may," he allowed, "but there's nothing we can do about it now. And besides, after tonight, I think everyone will be more willing to let the Muggles in."

"You seem quite confident," Brosnan ventured.

Shacklebolt looked at him. "I plan for what happens after victory because defeat means death."

That was far truer than he wanted it to be, but the wizard was right. Best to proceed as though they would win.

"I think it would be best if you made Arthur's position official. Enough of this sneaking about, at least on your end."

Shacklebolt raised an eyebrow. "Not yours?"

"We have too many Fudges and Scrimgeours and Malfoys in our government," Brosnan said flatly. "Some fool would try and start a war with you to get made Prime Minister.

"And it would scare people. Rightfully so, at that. I know Arthur's job involves dealing with "pranks" that some of your wizards like to play on us. That would be bad enough, but think about those Death Eaters. How many missing persons cases are their fault?"

He looked steadily at Shacklebolt. "I agree with you, we need to stop sneaking around, as soon as possible. But not now."

Weasley spoke, then. "We'll have enough trouble controlling things on our end, Kingsley. And you know how many more of them there are than us."

"Yes. That is so. But time is passing. I hope your men are in position, or will be soon."

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0500 GMT

Arthur had known what was coming, but it was still extraordinarily painful to see Hagrid carrying Harry's body through the gates. He had hoped that perhaps Voldemort might do the honorable thing and fight a proper duel, but he should have known he wouldn't.

Still, he did enjoy seeing the vaguely discomfited look on his noseless face as he reached up to stroke the snake riding his shoulders, one that spread to the Death Eaters as they noticed that no one was panicking or weeping or trembling in fear. In fact, Arthur thought with a bit of pride, all of the defenders looked willing to carry on the fight.

He also saw that several of the Death Eaters were looking nervously up at where the SAS had set up, and wondered for a moment if they could see them. He doubted it—if they had, they almost certainly wouldn't have entered the courtyard, considering that the evidence of what the Muggles could do still lay strewn about the courtyard.

Voldemort opened his mouth, but McGonagall spoke first. "Be quiet and listen," she said in a tone that took Arthur back to Transfiguration class twenty years ago. "Ye've lost, Voldemort. There's nary a score of us fallen, and from the looks of things you've lost half of yours.

"We'll mourn for Harry, aye—for I've no doubt he went out tae face you alone, and that whate'er tale of his cowardice ye'd care tae give is nowt but lies. But if ye think that him dead will somehow break us, ye're more mistaken than ye've e'er been."

She sounded more Scottish than he'd ever heard before, Arthur thought, and she wasn't done.

"So," she continued, "we'll accept your surrender, if ye're willing tae give it."

To Arthur's astonishment, Voldemort threw back his head and laughed. It was a terrible thing, that promised death and torture and madness for all who opposed him.

"Foolish Minerva," he said once his cackling was done. "Do you not understand? I am the lord of Death, I cannot die. It matters not if you kill all who follow me, still I shall slay you, one by one. You will never know peace. You will bury your children. I will make you beg to die to end the horror. Indeed..."

A silver blur flashed, and Arthur blinked as it came to a halt and resolved itself as Godric Gryffindor's sword, buried right between the snake's eyes. Then he turned to see Neville Longbottom standing at the door to the Hall, holding the Sorting Hat in one hand and reaching for his wand in the other.

"That's for Harry, you windbag!" he yelled, as with a screech of rage and fury Voldemort threw a curse at the boy. There wasn't time for him to dodge and his wand wasn't ready, and all Arthur could do was watch in horror as the spell struck him...and did nothing.

Neville looked down at his chest, which was only appropriate because that was where everyone else was staring. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then all hell broke loose.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0505 GMT

When Voldemort had started in on his rant, Brosnan had been astounded by the man's audacity. Surely he wasn't delusional enough to think he could win, right?

But as he went on, he'd realized that Voldemort really didn't care. If he were the only man left alive in a world of corpses, he would consider that a victory.

Then the snake riding his shoulders received a sword to the face and he fired a spell at whoever had done it. Then the Death Eaters drew wand, and Williams yelled "Open fire."

There was a sound like tearing cloth as all three machine guns cut loose, tearing into the Death Eaters' back ranks, while the riflemen picked off the ones in front and around Voldemort.

Then the friendly wizards got into the act, and those of the Death Eaters who were still on their feet, which wasn't many of them, started to run-only to come to a sudden halt as a horde of centaurs, wizards, and creatures Brosnan had thought only existed in fairytales came through the gate.

The Death Eaters had nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. The smart ones dropped their wands and surrendered. The stupid ones tried to get out or fight. Within thirty seconds, there was only one wizard standing in the courtyard—Voldemort himself.

And then one of the corpses stood up, and he took aim at it before he realized that it wasn't dressed like the Death Eaters were. "Hold fire!" The major yelled.

He'd supposed that was young Potter's body being carried into the castle, and when McGonagall had made her speech that had been confirmed. Now he stood, facing Voldemort, and even from where he stood he was struck by how young he looked.

Still, he didn't look scared at all, though he supposed that the sort of person who could go face someone like Voldemort alone and pretend to be dead for some unknown length of time was unlikely to be easily frightened.

They appeared to be talking to each other. He rather wished that he knew what they were saying. Then, suddenly, he was able to. He supposed someone had cast some kind of voice-amplifying spell.

What they were saying would have been quite meaningful, he was sure, if he'd been a wizard, but it didn't really mean much to him until he heard Voldemort screech "and then, you brought in Muggles to kill your own kind!"

"They're as much my kind as you are, and I had nothing to do with it."

Brosnan snorted. He had that right. They'd surveilled Potter and the Dursleys, but take orders from a teenager? Not on Voldemort's life.

They continued, back and forth, for some time. Some of what they said didn't make any sense to him but apparently did to the wizards. Some of it, like the discussion about Dumbledore's death, made sense but certainly meant more to the wizards than it meant to him.

Then Harry said something about being the Elder Wand's true master, whatever that meant, and then...something...happened, he wasn't sure what, and Potter was standing with a wand in each hand and Voldemort's disintegrating body was on the ground.

For a long moment, all was silent. Then suddenly nearly everyone was cheering, and it nearly deafened him to hear it.

Then he heard the sound of helicopters, and he looked up to see all four choppers flying towards the castle—and there were no Dementors following them.

He breathed a sigh of relief, then, but he did have to wonder exactly how the choppers had made it through the night and what had happened to the monsters. He hoped it didn't involve something mad, and that it didn't involve swearing everyone at the base to secrecy. That was going to get broken quick as quick.

So many complications.

* * *

May 2, 1998, 0515 GMT

Arthur was still trying to understand just what had happened. It was still a little confusing, and he hoped that Harry, Ron, and Hermione would be able to explain the whole thing to him eventually.

Right now, however, all he wanted to do was be with his family. Victory was sweet, yes, and he understood that the cost of the battle had been low. But it was much different when your son was part of it, and right now all he wanted was to be with the rest of them.

"Arthur!" he heard McGonagall call, and he turned towards her he felt suddenly utterly weary, rather like he hadn't gotten much sleep lately and had been running around trying to avoid getting killed.

He staggered for a moment, and suddenly Charlie was next to him, holding him up.

"Are you all right, Dad?" he asked quietly, and Arthur took a moment before he answered.

Yes, his son was dead. But as he looked at Kingsley and the remaining Aurors, including Tonks, taking the surviving despondent Death Eaters into custody, and Bill and Fleur embracing, and the hundred and one other things that said that Voldemort and his nightmare was done, it didn't hurt quite as much as it had.

"Right enough, Charlie. Right enough."

**A/N: Readers may recall that Narcissa Malfoy died back in Chapter 10, and may be wondering how Harry managed to conceal the fact that he was still alive. The answer is that he didn't-thanks to the Battle of Hogwarts going considerably worse for the Death Eaters than in canon, Voldemort was in a bit of a hurry, and just told Hagrid to pick up the body. Because it doesn't matter what timeline you're in, Voldemort's a jerk like that.**

**Also, the story isn't done quite yet. There's still a few more changes that are going to be made to the history of both worlds...**


	13. Epilogue

September 13, 2001

Brosnan shook his head.

"That would be an utterly terrible idea," he told the Prime Minister flatly. "The wizards have a very strict non-interference policy, and with good reason."

"But..."

Brosnan wanted to shake the man. "What good would they do us?" He asked. "Magic isn't some kind of button you can push and have everything come out how you want." Though he had to admit that there were times it seemed like it.

And he understood why the Prime Minister wanted one of those buttons. Everyone was on edge right now, after what had happened to the Americans. Everyone wanted to know that Something Was Being Done to stop what had happened in New York from happening again, and everyone who actually knew anything about terrorism knew it would be impossible to ensure absolute security.

"Sir, I guarantee you that this same conversation is going on all over NATO. And every single liaison is giving his or her prime minister or president the same answer. NO."

He paused, then decided to add a spoonful of sugar to the medicine. "Now, if it should happen that the wizards in areas that we might invade should interfere, our wizards will provide assistance. For that matter, we might be able to talk them into doing so...preemptively."

That brightened the Prime Minister's mood considerably. "Do you really think so?"

"It is...possible. But I need to talk things over with my contact before I say anything more."

"Of course, of course."

Brosnan knew good and well that the Prime Minister was now almost hoping that the wizards in Afghanistan or Pakistan—come to think of it, were there wizards in those parts? He'd never really asked—would do something of the sort.

He, on the other hand, was very much hoping they would not. He did not want to see wizards go to war again. Especially after he'd managed to get some reports about what the French and Italians had found in the Balkans. The term for non-wizards caught in a magical battle when they weren't prepared for it was "collateral damage."

He hated that phrase.

* * *

September 14, 2001

Arthur thought that Tim looked utterly terrible. He'd thought the man seemed exhausted after the battle of Hogwarts, but right now he looked even worse.

"What's happened?" he asked.

Five minutes later, he very much wished that he hadn't asked and very much wanted to throw up.

"More than three thousand?"

In one day, the Americans had lost more people than the total number of wizards in Britain. That had to be...then he remembered that there were three hundred million Muggles in America, and for a moment he fought the urge to panic as he was reminded of the vast disparity in numbers between wizards and Muggles.

"Yes." Brosnan leaned forward. "We know who was behind it, we know where is, and we know who backed him. There's already plans being drawn up for an invasion."

"Where?" Arthur asked, hoping and praying it wasn't in Durmstrang country.

"Afghanistan." Tim said, very quietly.

Afghanistan—oh dear. Arthur grimaced. "That could be...trouble."

"Why?"

"Because there is no wizarding government in that area. East of Persia and west of China, the wizards are a law unto themselves."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that they don't consider themselves bound by the Statute of Secrecy, and might decide to involve themselves if you attack their kin." He caught himself, then, before he said anything that Tim might take as a commitment to join the Muggles in their war, although he couldn't see any reason to refuse them besides the statute. "I must discuss this with Kingsley."

"Of course."

* * *

October 14, 2001

Brosnan was extraordinarily nervous, which was not normal for him. However, these circumstances would have made anyone nervous except maybe someone like Castlereagh.

There were representatives here from all of the NATO countries. That he could live with, as he'd been Britain's representative on the wizard liaison council ever since Craig retired. What was making him nervous was the fact that there were representatives from every wizarding government that had territory in NATO as well.

Some of those...were a bit odd. Case in point, the witch representing the Radet vor Magikern, which was based in Sweden, had the Danish and Norwegian representatives next to her, because her group's jurisdiction covered all of the Nordic countries and the Baltic States.

When he'd asked Ingrid Haakon why that was the case, she'd muttered something unintelligible about the Kalmar Union. Whatever that was.

Fortunately, there weren't as many wizarding governments in Germany and Italy as there had been kingdoms. In fact, the German one had stayed united through the whole Cold War!

He brought his mind back to the task at hand. They'd called this meeting after all of the liaisons had come back with the same information, starting late last month. The consensus among the wizards who knew the area had been unanimous—the Pashtun wizards would join in with their non-magical fellows if they were invaded. Apparently that had happened when the Soviets invaded, and the International Council of Wizards had given the Russian wizards permission to get involved in order to get the Pashtun wizards to stop.

And the ICW had told the wizards living in the NATO countries that if the Pashtuns got involved again, they could do the same thing. And now, for the first time in centuries, possibly since Merlin and Arthur, wizards and non-wizards were meeting to plan out how they would work together to fight a war.

He looked around. He hoped that the North American and European wizards combined would have an easier time of it than the Russians had had. The after-action reports had made for grim reading.

* * *

June 19, 2003

Charlie Weasley grimaced as he crouched next to Thomas Kovacs. "How long?" he asked the American quietly.

"Keep your shirt on," Kovacs replied, just as quietly. "You know how things are in these mountains."

Charlie nodded unwillingly. He'd been here a year and a half, since the first sign that the Pashtun wizards had decided to fight alongside their Muggle cousins.

So far, the NATO wizards' campaign against their counterparts was going a bit better than the Muggles' campaign against the...Taliban, he thought was what the Muggles called the hostile locals.

If nothing else, he, Longbottom, and the other veterans of the Wizarding Wars had fought this kind of war before, and on the losing end of what the Americans called the "force disparity." They'd put that knowledge to good use. It also helped that some of the Russians who'd fought here in the 1980s had come along as well. Apparently some of them had unfinished business.

At any rate, the American Muggles had gotten word that the local guerrilla leader was moving his headquarters and taking his inner circle with him. Said inner circle included one of the few Pashtun wizards left who had sided with the Taliban. A few months ago, the goal would have been to kill him without harming anyone else.

Thar had been before they'd found out that some of the Pashtun wizards had been a little more free with their magic than they should have been. And, since usually the inner circles of these guerrilla leaders tended to act like Death Eaters, he had no qualms about killing them.

He looked over at the other member of the team. Aleksandr Konev's brother had been a Muggle, and had been sent to Afghanistan to serve out his term in the Soviet Army. The only thing they'd found after he'd gone missing had been his head.

The device in his chest pocket vibrated, and he smiled grimly. His father and some of the Muggle scientists had been working on building what they'd decided to call "Magitek" since a few months after the battle of Hogwarts. This device could tell if there was magic being used near it, and the closer it got to the source the more it vibrated. They'd just gotten the things a few weeks ago, and this was the first field test.

Then he saw them, coming around the crag, along with the distortion of a concealment charm above them. That made sense—the American Muggles owned the sky, and they used it for scouting, transport, and attack.

However, right now the main threat to the locals was on the ground, though they didn't know it yet.

He looked carefully at the group. Six men, one of whom was obviously a wizard. They had not run into a single Pashtun witch on the Taliban's side, which did not surprise him in the least once he learned about how they ran things here. He cast an eye up towards where the other team was crouched well above the trail, ready to cut off retreat.

And...now.

Neither he, Kovacs, nor Konev aimed at the wizard. If he was like any of the other Pashtun wizards, he was smart enough to know when to run, and that there were almost certainly more Outlanders ready to strike, which meant that he was going to try and get out instead of fight.

The other Pashtuns, however, were made of different stuff, and their guns were already halfway to their shoulders before a flurry of curses and hexes brought them down. One fell down the side of the mountain and started to roll towards the cliff. No one moved to help him.

Instead, the wizard grabbed on to the taller of the two Muggles and made a motion that indicated he was about to apparate—then bounced back like he'd just slammed into a rubber wall.

Charlie grinned. You needed to work an anti-apparition charm into the very rock of a place, and they took some time to make. So, why not work it into a rock that you could carry around with you?

The Muggle in the back dropped like a stone, and the wizard turned about to see that his way back was blocked. With a cry of rage, he fired a killing curse down the trail, but that left him open to attack, and the six smothered him and the man with him in spells.

Both fell to the ground, and after taking a moment to make sure there weren't any more hostiles in the area Charlie and those with him moved to investigate. He didn't need to get closer to tell that they were dead—you didn't need Avada Kedavra to kill a man with one spell, much less half a dozen—but identification was important to the Muggles. Besides, it looked like the three who'd only been stunned or knocked unconscious were coming around, and they could use some prisoners.

It took a matter of moments to knock them out again and restrain them, and then he sent Konev to check on the one who'd fallen down the mountain. Then, he turned to the wizard's body, lying next to the Muggle who he'd attempted to apparate away with. Why would he have done that? No Pashtun wizard had ever been seen trying to rescue a Muggle.

Kovacs crouched down next to the dead Muggle and frowned for a moment, then opened his chest pocket and pulled out a photograph. Then he looked at it, looked back at the corpse, and he swore in disbelief.

"What is it?" Charlie asked. He couldn't imagine what would cause the normally phlegmatic American to lose control like that.

"Charlie, don't you know who this is?"

Realization suddenly dawned on the British wizard as he looked down at the corpse. He hadn't been paying nearly as much attention as he should have during the briefings. It wasn't surprising that the American had paid more.

"You don't mean that we just..."

"Yeah. We got bin Laden himself," Kovacs said with grim satisfaction. "Which means the No-majs can probably find out from these three," he pointed to the trussed-up survivors, "where he was coming from and where he was going."

He then smiled grimly. "I can only imagine what they'll do with that information. But that's for later. Let's get back to base."

* * *

October 15, 2008

George Lazenby leaned back in his chair and took a moment to look around the office suite that the newly-renamed Magic Section now occupied and took a moment to grin. It was a brief one, but the fact that his section of the Service had a large suite of new offices was definitely a sign of the increasing cooperation between mage and Muggle, although the Home and Foreign offices were starting to claim that such should be under their jurisdiction.

He snorted. The wizards were unlikely to agree to that, either here or in any of the other countries. Their initial contacts had been with soldiers or spies, rather than diplomats and politicians. And as near as he could tell, they'd gotten used to it.

He did have to admit that, as both wizard and non-wizard got more comfortable with increasing levels of contact, things were much less cloak and dagger than they had been. For example, the non-standard fireplace that was always lit and was right across from his desk.

The one through which someone was about to step...now.

There was a brief flash of light, and Bill Weasley, who'd taken over his aging father's role as the Ministry's representative to what was becoming known as the NATO conclave, was in his office.

They shook hands, and Weasley took one of the chairs in front of the desk. After exchanging pleasantries and inquiring after each other's families—well, Lazenby asked about Weasley's, he didn't have one to ask about—they set to business.

"Is the ICW still panicking?" He asked.

"Oh, yes, quite. Although by now even the Chinese and Indians have deigned to admit that they, too, had been forced into contact with their non-magical governments." Bill rolled his eyes. "It took them long enough to finally admit what everyone was sure had happened."

"Really? When did that happen?"

"Both in the seventies."

"Of course." Lazenby shook his head.

He wasn't at all surprised by the fact that the Chinese and Indians had managed to bring in their wizards. He was surprised that the Chinese had taken so long to do it.

"At any rate, most of the other countries are just watching to see if we can make this work. And as you people keep making cameras smaller and smaller and make it easier and easier to pass pictures and videos along to each other...it's apparent that the Statute of Secrecy will fail, eventually."

Lazenby nodded. "And when it does, it'll fail everywhere. Oh, we might be able to discredit the first few videos, but eventually something undeniable will happen. And you'll want to be unified, when that day comes."

"Or, at least all on the same page," Weasley said dryly. "Unified is not going to happen. Which is good, as far as I'm concerned. My wife might be French, but she doesn't want my side of the family mucking about with Beauxbatons and I don't want hers mucking about with Hogwarts."

He shrugged. "But that's neither here nor there. You've not had any major incidents, I trust?"

"One incident of a vanishing tea set. Nothing else."

It was remarkable, how many fewer missing persons reports there had been since the Battle of Hogwarts. Indeed, the numbers still weren't even close.

"That's good. How's the research going?"

"Splendidly. The boffins're already working on..."

* * *

June 19, 2019

"You're sure of this?" Lazenby asked. "This isn't just the usual Durmstrang grumbling?"

Bill nodded grimly. "The Radet vor Magikern's decision to withdraw all support from Durmstrang five years ago was the pebble that started an avalanche. The Magierstag and Cziarodziejsejm following made what was likely, inevitable. The last holdouts are Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and the opposition in the latter has come together around a former Quidditch star, of all things, and looks likely to win the next election"

Lazenby shrugged. There'd been more unlikely politicians, especially in places like Bulgaria. "Shouldn't that make them try and change things back closer to home?" He asked. "Try to do to their governments what the Death Eaters tried to do to the Ministry?

The wizard shook his head. "The Durmstrangers see us as the source of the infection, and perhaps the source of their salvation. I think they think that if they can take over here and put things to rights as they see it, they can turn Hogwarts into Durmstrang.

"Idiots. Just about the only members of Death Eater families who are still alive and not in prison were children during the Battle of Hogwarts. And they're still running scared.

"But that's what they have planned. I'm not sure how they plan to do it, but that's what the other governments' informants are saying."

"Do they know when?" Lazenby asked. It was well-nigh incredible that they would think such a plan could succeed, but he supposed that desperate men might take desperate measures. That happened a lot.

"No. But it will be soon. Perhaps within the next year."

Lazenby nodded.

"Right. We're with you, and we'll meet them together."

Bill frowned. "Will you able to find them?" He asked.

Lazenby grinned. "If nothing else, we'll follow you."

* * *

November 8, 2019, 1900 GMT

Charlie Weasley wondered how he'd found himself in this position again.

It hadn't come completely out of nowhere, of course, although some of his more oblivious acquaintances seemed to have been caught by surprise.

He wasn't sure why. It wasn't as though the pureblood supremacists in Durmstrang country hadn't been loudly denouncing Britain ever since the post-Battle of Hogwarts reforms. He'd sometimes wondered why they hadn't gone after the French and Spanish, who had fully embraced their Muggle-borns much earlier, but he supposed they might have given up Western Europe as a lost cause.

Britain, however, they seemed to regard as salvageable. He wasn't sure why. He suspected that they thought that the growing ties between the wizarding and Muggle worlds might have frightened some people into backing them.

Which, back in the '90s, it might have. But had been before the Death Eaters had come back and run wilder than they ever did in the First Wizarding War, and Muggle soldiers had helped to put them down. And then, for a wonder, had left wizarding Britain to its own devices instead of trying to control them, which had made the wizards a lot less nervous.

To boot, nearly all of the Death Eater sympathizers had gone to Durmstrang country by around 2010. He imagined that the easterners thought that they were only the ones fiercest in their anti-Muggle beliefs. In fact, they had been almost the only ones who disliked Muggles more than they disliked Death Eaters.

And now they had joined with the Durmstrangers and a few Russians in an attempt to take over Britain. Again.

Well, that wasn't going to happen. Thanks to the Radet, they knew exactly what direction the attack was coming from—over the North Sea, straight from Durmstrang itself. Thanks to the Conclave, they also had plenty of fighters, today. It was not just his friends and family alone, but wizards from all over Europe who were here. Indeed, they had enough people here that they actually had scouts, hidden behind Concealing Charms, shadowing the Durmstrangers and radioing in reports.

He smiled, then. Radios, magically enhanced and protected, with extra shielding for their electronics so the conflicting magical and electronic energy fields didn't fry each other. His father and brother had been busy men.

At any rate, the Durmstrangers would be rather surprised when they got to Hogwarts and found the defenders ready and waiting for them in the clouds. Of course, that wouldn't be the most shocking thing they'd find.

The most shocking thing was what was just arriving here, if the low-pitched mechanical growling he heard behind him meant what he thought it did.

He turned around, keeping careful hold of his broom as he did so. Yes, there they were. The helicopters of NATO Task Force Familiar. He snorted at the name. Some Muggle didn't take himself too seriously.

They were what the Muggles called utility helicopters, which were neither as well armed or armored as their attack helicopters, as he'd learned in Afghanistan. Even so, they could be armed, and the door guns on these weren't normal machine guns.

Their timing was impeccable, too. Teddy Tonks had just called in to say that the Durmstrangers were fifteen minutes away, at their current pace.

Charlie grinned then, somewhat unpleasantly. Let them come.

* * *

November 8, 2019 1915 GMT

Lazenby held onto the safety strap and looked out the side door. The helicopter was American, but apart from the pilots everyone on board was British.

It was an odd arrangement, but it was a necessary one. Only the Americans had the equipment to spare for a group like Task Force Familiar on a permanent basis, but no one had been willing to be left out of it completely.

Especially not his country, which, as he had pointed out, had more recent experience coordinating wizards and non-wizards in a fight than anyone else. Even the Norwegians had to admit that none of their veterans were exactly in shape to even really give advice anymore.

So, Britain had managed to get more involved than anyone except the Americans. In fact, the commander of the task force, Major Duncan Withers, had been at the Battle of Hogwarts.

He really hoped this would be the last time they had to deal with this nonsense on British soil. He suspected it would be, though Weasley had dropped hints that the Chinese and Indian wizards weren't happy about what their European counterparts were doing.

Still, that was a far cry from the sort of attitude that would cause them to do anything more than grumble. And the Durmstrangers should be coming in sight...now.

It was, he thought, a rather impressive sight. There must have been two hundred of them, at least, riding their brooms into what they thought was an unaware, unwitting target.

"Now," he heard Potter say over the radio, and everyone who'd been maintaining the Concealment Charms dropped them. It was almost comical, the way the attackers skidded to a halt when they saw four hundred wizards and witches and four helicopters in their way.

Potter was the one leading the defense, since the closest thing the wizards had to a military was their law enforcement. Which meant he got to do the talking.

"Lay down your wands!" he called out.

Lazenby wondered if they would actually be fool enough to try and run. Even the fastest broom couldn't outpace a chopper going full tilt—they were charging?

Yes, they were, throwing spells like there was no tomorrow. Some kind of Gotterdammerung death wish, he guessed. Well, no matter. There was a reason why the friendly wizards were above and below where the choppers were.

The four miniguns opened fire, and for thirty seconds Lazenby was utterly disoriented by the utterly incredible noise and the thousand muzzle flashes that came out of the one in his chopper. The tracers came out so close together that it looked like a laser was sweeping the sky clean.

Well, four lasers, anyway. He wondered what the wizards thought about it. He was certainly impressed.

The gunfire stopped, which took a few seconds to register through the ringing in his ears and the afterimages dancing over his eyes. Once those finally cleared, he looked out to see if the Durmstrangers were still there.

Somehow, some of them were still flying. He wasn't quite sure how, since they'd been flying in a fairly packed formation. On the other hand, they were also all flying away from Hogwarts as fast as they could.

And he wasn't sure if the defenders had taken a single casualty.

"All forces, pursue," Potter ordered. "They're not getting back to Durmstrang."

Major Withers spoke, then. "We'll be with you all the way. The ground teams will rendezvous with us over Norway."

Ordinarily, these choppers wouldn't be able to go that far. However, it turned out that Extending Charms worked on fuel tanks and didn't cause the electronics to break.

Magitek was a truly wondrous thing.

* * *

November 10, 2019

Nothing would ever be the same, Charlie thought as he looked around the ruins of Durmstrang.

Nothing at all.

The flight across the North Sea had been cold and wet and miserable, but they'd been buoyed by the fact that they were taking the fight to where it had started. Admittedly, there were concerns about the Durmstrang defenses, which everyone had been certain included some very dark magic and were extremely strong.

Their forces had only grown as they approached the school. Another eight helicopters had joined them, loaded with Muggle soldiers, as had another three hundred wizards from what had been Durmstrang country. It was the largest army of wizards that had ever been put together, even including the Goblin Wars.

They had, of course, spent much of the journey getting in each others' way and then trying to sort it all out. Finally, they'd split up based on where everyone had gone to school, with the Muggles in reserve.

The assault had been...anticlimactic. There'd simply been so many attackers and so few defenders that it was over almost before it had begun. Even the magical defenses had gone down quickly, partly because magic-resistant did not mean bulletproof, but also because, as the Battle of Hogwarts had proven, such defenses needed living backup and direction to be really effective.

Durmstrang hadn't had enough of either, partially because school had been out. There had maybe been a dozen people here.

Which was good. Charlie wasn't Voldemort. Killing kids didn't sit well with him. Wasn't their fault that their parents were, as Kovacs would put it, trash.

The wizards had struck from all four sides of the school, with the Muggles coming down from the top. Within fifteen minutes, it was all over. Three attackers were dead, two wizards and one Muggle soldier, and none of the defenders were still alive.

And the castle was an utter wreck. No one had been really concerned about preserving it for later, which meant that it had been blasted with magic, bullets, and high explosive. The place was even more devastated than Hogwarts had been.

And now—now he was watching two things happen that he'd never thought he'd see. All of the wizarding heads of government who had people here were Portkeying in, one by one. He wasn't sure if there had ever been so many in one place except maybe at an ICW meeting.

And that led to the second thing that he'd never thought he'd see. All of the Muggle presidents and prime ministers who had people here were arriving as well. He really wasn't sure why.

Then he saw that some wizards were bringing a table out of the Durmstrang Great Hall. That was a little odd, then out of the corner of his eye he saw his youngest sister-in-law walking forward with a roll of parchment in her hand.

He wasn't surprised that she would be carrying it herself, despite being the Minister of Magic for the British Isles, but now he was wondering what it was.

The wizards put the table down, and Hermione Weasley unrolled the parchment and laid it carefully on the table, then cast a sticking charm on it. That was sensible, as it was a bit windy.

Then he noticed that the courtyard was filling up with people. It seemed like everyone was coming to see what the fuss was about. Then he saw the seals on the parchment and knew that it was some kind of treaty. What sort of treaty, though?

Hermione Weasley then took her place between the crowd and the table, and began to speak.

"This is the second time that a school has burned because there were people who believed that those with magic and those without could not exist as equals, even if they were separate."

Every American there winced, and Charlie wondered why before she continued on.

"I do not want to see it again. Nor does anyone else. This document was completed last week," she gestured to the parchment behind her. "It's something we've needed to do for a long time."

She inhaled. "It is an agreement that will place wizards under the jurisdiction of the non-wizarding governments of their countries. We have sat aside too long. It is long past time that we joined together. Because if we do not, then this will happen again. And again. And again. And I intend to come out of hiding myself, not be dragged out."

She looked about. "I know all of us have been given the authority to make this agreement. Who here will join me?"

Who could gainsay her? Especially here and now?

No one. Not today. Not when the proof that wizardkind could not hide in the shadows was so clear. Not when the benefits of joining the worlds together, and the costs of not doing so, were so plain.

Nothing would ever be the same for anyone, now.

Honestly, he was looking forward to it.

**A/N: T** **hat's the end of The Recording Option. Thanks for reading and reviewing, I hope you liked it and that the ending was satisfactory. Tune in in May, when I take a stab at what the MACUSA was up to during VoldyWar II. See y'all next time.**


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